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Some Remarkable Women. 



A ,Bool$; for Yourjg Iiadies. 



DANIEL WISE, D. D., 

Author of "Men of Renown," "Life of Carvosso," "Story of a 
Wonderful Life," etc. 



"To teach us how divine a thing 
A woman may be made."— Wordsworth. 



CINCINNATI: 

CRANSTON AND STOWE. 

NEW YORK: 

PHILLIPS & HUNT. 

1887. 



■A* 



Copyright by 
CRANSTON & STOWE, 
1887. 











PAGES. 

Introductory Words to Young "Women, 5-8 

I. 

The Triumph of Woman's Genius over Formidable 

Difficulties, 9-40 

II. 

The First American Woman who made Literature 

a Profession, 41-59 

III. 

A Successful Writer of Religious Books, and an 

Eminent Christian Worker, 60 87 

IV. 

A kSELF-SACRIFICING HOSPITAL NURSE, 88-118 



4 CONTENTS. 

V. 

A Eemarkable Example of Sisteely Affection, 

and a Popular Writer for Children, .... 119-139 

VI. 

A Writer of Christian Hymns, and a Successful 

Soul-winner, 140-163 

VII. 

Uxlictct Remans, 

One of the most Accomplished Poets of her Times, 164-190 

VIII. 

Woman's Unselfish Devotion to Philanthropic 

Work, 191-220 

IX. 

The Self-devoted Sister and Astronomical Dis- 



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Introductory Words to Youna Women. 




njftS a traveler on reaching the summit of a hill 
i^JS) casts an inquiring eye upon the landscape 
which lies beyond, so does every serious- 
minded young lady when she reaches the con- 
fines of coming womanhood occasionally cast away 
a measure of the lightsome thoughtlessness of her 
early girlhood, and strive to look with curious eye 
upon her future life. It matters not that every 
thing before her is shrouded in mist, that the only 
thing certain in the part she is to take in the grand 
drama of her earthly existence is its uncertainty. Yet 
the impulses of her aspiring young soul force to her 
quivering lips the question, What is to be my lot 
in life? 

To this very natural and by no means unfitting in- 
quiry there comes no voice nor sound from behind the 
all-enshrouding, impenetrable mist. Then, if her 



6 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

nature be timid and anxious, she may direct her 
thoughts to what she knows of those who move within 
and about her present social circle. She calls up images 
of some women who, by taking ill-advised steps, have 
spoiled their lives ; of others who, bereft of parents 
and near relatives, have been thrown unprepared 
upon their own resources, and have found their lives 
to be a toilsome struggle for bread ; of still others 
who, though outwardly prosperous and living in 
gayety and fashion, she knows are empty-hearted and 
miserable. These unhappy women float before her 
vision like figures of evil omen, and she shudders 
lest it should be her destiny to share a fate more or 
less similar to theirs. 

To affirm that there is nothing in the uncertain- 
ties of life to awaken serious thoughtfulness in young 
women, would be to make a false and misleading 
statement. It would be equally wide from the truth 
to teach that their unavoidable perils are such as to 
justify brooding and painful anxiety. In this age, 
the respect paid to woman and the opportunities 
oifered her for free self-development, leave little 
room for her to dread any grave dangers except 
such as she may call into existence by her own self- 
will, and by her own obstinate refusal to be guided 
by the wisdom of her parents and the precepts of 



INTRODUCTORY WORDS. 7 

Him who is the only infallible Teacher. In the 
tenderness of his unfathomable love, he is ever whis- 
pering in her heart, would she but listen for his 
voice, and saying to her when she is longing for 
direction, " Wilt thou not from this time cry unto 
me, My Father, thou art the guide of my youth ?" 
Self-surrendered to his guidance, she has nothing 
to fear. His watchful providence will guard her 
interests. His peace will make her life worth liv- 
ing, be its outward condition what it may. But if 
she will be her own counselor, will walk in the 
light of her own imagined wisdom, and will be gov- 
erned by her own blind impulses, she will surely 
find the roses of her own fancies to be begirt with 
thorws that will pierce not her hands only, but also 
her heart, with deadly wounds. Therefore, so far 
as her happiness and general well-being are con- 
cerned, her destiny is largely in her own hands. 

The character sketches in this volume are illus- 
trations of these truths. The women portrayed 
moved amidst very varied circumstances. Some, 
like Miss Adams and the Bronte sisters, were largely 
left to depend for their support and enjoyments on 
their own resources; others, like Sister Dora, Miss 
Havergal, and the Grimke sisters, were reared in nests 
lined with eider-down. But all attained their crowns 



8 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

of fame, and wrote their names on human hearts, by 
persistent self-culture; and those of them who soared 
to the topmost heights of moral and spiritual excel- 
lence and usefulness, did so by first sitting as lowly 
pupils at the feet of the great Teacher. Like the 
" virtuous woman " whose price Solomon declared 
to be "far above rubies," they were all courageous 
in beating down obstacles, brave in enduring trial, 
diligent in their studies and labors, self-denying in 
their abstinence from hurtful pleasures, and persist- 
ent in their duties. They all teach the same great 
lessons of life to the young women of to-day; namely, 
that to be happy and useful they must not look upon 
themselves as dolls, to be dressed, admired, petted, 
and kept in idleness by parents and husbands, but 
as human beings, whose destiny hinges on the high 
or low purposes for which they live — on habits of 
self-reliance, intellectual toil, industrious employment 
of their natural gifts, benevolent labors for others, 
and spiritual self-culture. To encourage women to 
accept these highest and noblest views of life, it is 
written that " favor is deceitful and beauty is vain ; 
but a woman that feareth the Lord she shall be 
praised." 

Englewood, New Jersey. 



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I. 

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XI 



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"Nop look nop tone revealeth aught 
Save woman's quietness of thought; 
And yet apound hep is a light 
Of inwapd majesty and might." 

N the month of February, 1820, the vicarage 
of Haworth, in Yorkshire, England, received 
&@ within its walls the family of the Rev. Pat- 
Y rick Bronte, the newly appointed vicar of 
Ha worth parish. The vicar was a tall, hand- 
some, blue-eyed Irishman, the son of an Irish 
peasant. His early boyhood had been spent toil- 
ing on his father's scanty holding; but by dint 
of uncommon energy he had managed to prepare 
himself for Cambridge University, where he took 
his degree when about thirty years of age. Five 
years later he had married Maria Branwell, an 

educated, gentle young lady, reared at sunny Pen- 

9 



10 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

zance, in Cornwall, but poorly fitted because of 
her consumptive tendency to do hard battle with 
the difficulties inseparable from the circumstances 
of a vicar forced to be content with a stinted 
salary. Seven years of marriage had brought 
them six children, with whom they entered into 
possession of Haworth vicarage. 

There is not much either in the house or its 
surroundings to cheer the spirits of this drooping 
mother. The long, straggling village of Haworth 
has no rural attractions. It stands on the slope of 
a low, bleak, treeless hill. Its rude, comfortless 
houses, and unattractive mills are built of blackish 
gray stone. Close to the vicarage garden is the 
village grave-yard, studded thick with tombstones, 
and overcrowded with the remains of the village 
dead.' On one side lies the sleepy, monotonous 
village; on the other a broad expanse of equally 
monotonous moors. The parsonage itself is an ob- 
long, two-storied structure, built of gray stone. 
Within we find two parlors of moderate dimensions, 
separated by a narrow hall, one of which is the 
vicar's study, the other the family sitting-room. 
Both are floored with flag-stones. Behind these 
are a store-room and two kitchens. The upper floor 
is divided into a like number of bedrooms, one of 



THE BRONTE SISTERS. 11 

which is but a good-sized closet. Into this cheer- 
less abode this feeble mother, with her six little 
childreu, is ushered by the stately vicar, who shows 
scant sympathy with either the little lady's feeble- 
ness, or with her very natural shrinkings from the 
naked discomforts of the unattractive dwelling. 

Our interest in this family centers not in the 
cold, selfish vicar, nor in his gentle wife, who died 
of cancer seventeen months after her arrival at 
Haworth; nor in the two elder girls, who died in 
their youth; nor in the graceless Branwell, the 
one boy of the family; but in the three younger 
daughters. These were the petite, pale-faced, im- 
petuous Charlotte, little, prattling Emily, and baby 
Anne, who are destined to be subsequently known 
to fame as Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. 

These six children were left mostly to their own 
resources during the last year of their mother's 
life, and the year following her death, Maria, the 
eldest, though only little more than eight years old, 
acted the part of a little mother to her brother 
and sisters. The vicar spent his time mostly in 
the seclusion of his study, leaving his motherless 
children to their own devices. His only servant 
was without qualifications to teach or guide them. 
He permitted no communication between his chil- 



12 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

dren and his humble parishioners. Hence these 
little ones lived and amused themselves without 
guidance or care, reading the newspapers, inventing 
childish plays, and strolling over the moors, " know- 
ing and caring absolutely for no creature outside 
the walls of their own home." Never had little 
civilized children less training than they at this 
period of their lives. Nevertheless, despite this 
sad lack of affectionate care, they seem to have 
dearly loved each other, and to have been happy in 
the wild freedom permitted them. 

Twelve months after their mother's death, their 
maternal aunt, Miss Branwell, came from Cornwall 
to preside over Mr. Bronte's household. This lady 
was an antiquated maiden, somewhat strict in her 
ideas of family discipline, sincerely intending to 
do her best to train her departed sister's little wild- 
lings in the ways of virtue. But her discipline 
lacked the subtle power of loving gentleness; and 
though beneficial in many respects, was not favor- 
able to the development of the best sides of the 
strong characters they possessed. It failed to bring 
out their restricted affections. It made the self-willed 
Charlotte and dogged Emily more self-centered and 
self-restrained than ever. Little Anne, whose na- 
ture was sweet, gentle, and submissive, suffered 



THE BRONTE SISTERS. 13 

least from Miss Branwell's well-meant but mistaken 
methods of asserting her authority. 

Her entrance into the vicarage was nevertheless 
a blessing to them, in that it led to the curtailment 
of their gypsy-like freedom, to their acquisition of 
various housewifely arts, and to some regularity in 
their study of lessons, which she made them recite 
to their father, who, however, rarely favored them 
with his presence. And when he did talk with 
them at the tea-table, his conversations, instead of 
being suited to their age and peculiarities. of char- 
acter, were about politics, political men, scenes of 
horror taken from Irish history, and weird Irish 
traditions. To these precocious children such topics 
were stimulants to their wild, morbid tendencies, 
and, instead of filling their imaginations with pic- 
tures of the beautiful, and their hearts with tender 
and healthful sentiments, peopled the former with 
images of ungentle, unnatural, fierce, adventurous 
beings, and begot in the latter morbid, unhealthy 
feelings. To little Emily those uncanny Irish stories 
were probably the germs of her powerful but 
morbidly passionate story, "Wuthering Heights." 
Had Parson Bronte possessed genuine paternal 
affection, it would have taught him a wiser method 
of entertaining his much isolated children. 



14 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

In 1824, in consequence of their suffering from 
measles and whooping-cough, the vicar thought it 
prudent to send four of his little girls to a cheap 
boarding-school for clergymen's daughters. This 
change, though well intended, wrought no good to 
the Bronte children. The school proved to be a 
house of suffering, disease, and death. Scant, ill- 
cooked food; a damp, unwholesome building; lack 
of proper matronly care; and, finally, a death- 
breathing epidemic fever, caused Maria and Eliz- 
abeth, the two oldest of the girls, to die; and, in 
the Winter of 1825, compelled the return of Char- 
lotte and little Emily to their motherless home, now 
more gloomy than before, owing to the untimely 
deaths of the motherly Maria and the patient Eliz- 
abeth. In her "Jane Eyre " Charlotte subsequently 
drew a tragic picture of the horrors of that charnel- 
house for children, misnamed a school. 

Charlotte, Emily, Anne, and the only boy, Bran- 
well, with their father, aunt, and Tabby, the servant, 
now constituted the Bronte family. The life within 
that vicarage was active, yet wearisome through lack 
of variety. The selfish vicar, when not called out to 
do official duty, spent most of his time in his study. 
His part in the family life now consisted in hearing 
Branwell recite his lessons, and, when at the morn- 



THE BRONT& SISTERS. 15 

ing and evening meals, telling the news of the day. 
Miss Branwell continued to teach housewifery to 
the three girls, and to give them such religious and 
other instruction as her narrow mental resources 
permitted. The little maidens, Emily and Anne 
especially, found their recreation in long wanderings 
over the lonely moors which stretched far away 
from the church-yard toward the distant hills. In 
the evenings, in place of more juvenile and suit- 
able reading, these neglected children perused the 
tory newspapers of the day, Blackwood's Magazine, 
Southey's romances, and Sir Walter Scott's poems. 
They also invented plays, and made heroes for 
themselves out of what they read in the newspapers 
concerning the leading men of the day. They were 
still strongly attached to each other. They were not 
unhappy, yet their lives were unnaturally narrowed 
by their isolation from the outer world, of which 
they knew next to nothing, except what they 
learned from the newspapers and from their brother, 
who was, alas ! already beginning to know it through 
the idle youths who lounged about the parlors of the 
Black Bull Inn, which stood hard by the church. 

In 1831 Charlotte was sent away to school, 
where she remained about eighteen months. What 
she learned there, she taught, after her return home, 



16 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

to Emily and Anne. She found them apt scholars. 
Emily was especially quick in learning to draw. All 
of them were much in the habit of writing stories 
and poems, for which they had a natural aptitude. 
In 1833 their lives were touched and favorably in- 
fluenced by the visit of a young lady, named Ellen 
Nussey, with whom Charlotte had formed an inti- 
mate and lasting friendship at school. 

Emily dreaded the presence of strangers. Her 
isolation from 'general society and her habit of wan- 
dering on the treeless moors, had bred in her mind 
not merely a dread, but a hatred, of strange faces. 
Nevertheless, the gentle manners and affectionate 
spirit of Miss Nussey won Emily's regard, and the 
two became fast friends. This fact suggested to the 
thoughtful Charlotte that, as Emily's sympathies 
had been won by the presence of one congenial mind, 
they might possibly be broadened by such contact 
with other girls of her age as would be occasioned by 
the necessary associations ot boarding-school life. 
Hence, when she was herself invited to teach in the 
school in which she had been whilom a pupil, she 
persuaded Emily to enter it as a student. 

Emily was now, 1835, sixteen years old, and am- 
bitious to acquire sufficient education to earn her 
own living. But she dreaded the constraint of 



THE BRONT& SISTERS. 17 

school as intensely as she loved the unrestricted 
freedom of her home-life. To her, the moor, with 
its heather-bells, its birds, its timid hares, its moor- 
land sheep, its tiny water-courses, its green hollows, 
and its unrestricted field of vision, was her ideal 
Eden. How, then, could she endure the circum- 
scribed range of a boarding-school grounds, with its 
compulsory association, day and night, with compan- 
ions for whose friendship she felt not only no desire, 
but a positive antipathy? Yet the reserved girl, 
desirous of acting a noble part in life, made up her 
mind to overcome her prejudices if she could. And 
so she became a student in the school wherein Char- 
lotte was beginning to test her skill as a teacher. 

As the captured bird, long accustomed to the 
freedom of the skies, pines and forgets to sing when 
imprisoned in a cage, so did Emily Bronte pine and 
droop at school. Her will was bent on being con- 
tented there ; but despite her purpose, her face grew 
pale, her figure shrunk, her strength declined, and 
the watchful Charlotte, seeing that her uncomplain- 
ing sister would soon die if she remained, counseled 
the mistress of the school to send her home. Em- 
ily then left, and the gentle, submissive Anne took 
her place. Her old life at Ha worth soon proved 
an effectual tonic for Emily's homesickness, and 



18 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

the breath of the moors speedily restored the health 
which three months of school life had well-nigh 
destroyed. 

When, in the Autumn of 1836, Charlotte re- 
sumed her duties at the opening of a new school- 
term, and Anne returned to her studies, Emily sur- 
prised all the family by accepting the post of teacher 
in a school of forty pupils, near Halifax. The du- 
ties imposed upon her there kept her busy from six 
in the morning until eleven at night. No wonder 
that at the end of six months she found her " health 
broken down, shattered by long-resisted homesick- 
ness;" and that she was obliged to return home 
once more, to renew her vigor and recover her 
spirits, by breathing the free air of her beloved moors. 

From the time of her return from Halifax until 
she went to Brussels with Charlotte in 1842, Emily 
spent her time at home, toiling at her household 
duties. Charlotte and Anne were at school-teaching, 
during much of that period. Bran well — the hand- 
some, gifted, impulsive, unprincipled Branwell — was 
also often away, sometimes doing duty as usher in a 
school, or as private tutor in a family, or as railway 
station-master or clerk ; but always a rolling stone, 
shifting from one thing to another, adhering only to 
his habits of dissipation. When these three were 



THE BRONTE SISTERS. 19 

away, Hawortli vicarage was a place of housewifely 
toil for the gifted Emily. Yet so long as she could 
enjoy the freedom of her Eden, the solitary moors, 
accompanied by her fierce but faithful dog, she was 
cheerful and content, if not exuberantly happy. 
When her sisters were at home at their vacation 
times, her cup of enjoyment, despite the extra house- 
hold labor made necessary by the lameness of old 
Tabby, was overflowingly full. No literary ambi- 
tion seems to have been as yet awakened in Emily 
or Anne. But Charlotte was not wholly without 
the instinct of authorship, when she and Branwell 
sent some of their poetic compositions to Southey, 
to Coleridge, and to Wordsworth, hoping for encour- 
agement which they did not receive. 

Wearied by the hated work of govern essing 
under the direction of exacting superiors, the three 
girls resolved at last to establish a school of their 
own at Haworth. It had once been the dream of 
their young lives to earn money to pay their brother's 
expenses as a student at the Royal Academy. That 
hope gradually expired in the grief of their discov- 
ery that he was so far enslaved by dissipated habits 
that he could not be safely sent into the tempta- 
tions of London life. But, though that dream was thus 
rudely dissolved, the necessity for self-support still 



20 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

pressed upon them. Their father was growing old. 
His vigor was declining. He had to employ a curate. 
His death must be viewed as a possible fact lying 
somewhere in the near future. They must therefore 
give their attention to the means of self-support. 
To live by authorship was something not yet ad- 
mitted into their thoughts. What better project 
could they entertain, therefore, than to establish a 
school at the old vicarage ? After much talking 
and consultation, they resolved to make the attempt. 
But their lack of sufficient accomplishments now 
stared them in the face. They were well-informed, 
mature in thought and feeling, highly gifted ; but 
their pronunciation of French was far from pure; 
their knowledge of German was superficial; their 
musical acquirements were not such as teachers 
needed to possess. Hence, ambitious Charlotte pro- 
posed that, their Aunt Branwell consenting to assist 
them with a portion of her savings, she and Emily 
should spend six months in an educational estab- 
lishment at Brussels, and then that all three sisters 
should open an academy in some more attractive 
spot than Haworth. "A school taught by three 
clergyman's daughters educated on the Continent," 
said Charlotte, laughing merrily at her own conceit, 
" can not fail to attract pupils !" 



THE BRONTfi SISTERS. 21 

After overcoming many obstacles, this scheme 
was matured. To the hopeful, ambitious, daring 
Charlotte, there was life and inspiration in it; to 
the reserved, shrinking, home-loving Emily, it was 
torture to think of going among strangers. Never- 
theless, the brave girl yielded her reluctant consent, 
and in February, 1842, the two sisters, conducted by 
their eccentric father, left Haworth, and were duly 
installed among the Belgian girls who were pupils 
of Madame Heger's Pensionnat in the Rue d'lsa- 
belle, Brussels. 

To the genial demoiselles in Madame Heger's 
school, these two young English women must have 
appeared strange and uncouth creatures. Charlotte 
was twenty-six years old, Emily twenty-four. Neither 
was handsome. Both were shy and reserved ; stiff 
and prim in their manners, their mode of dressing 
was so lacking in grace and fashion, and their York- 
shire French so bungling, as to be matter of sur- 
prise and jest. Emily carried her reserve so far as 

to resist the efforts of the more kindly disposed girls 

- 
to draw her into conversation. She would have no 

companion but her sister. Her body was in Brus- 
sels, but her heart was in Yorkshire. Charlotte's 
reserve was less extreme, and she formed one or two 
friendships among the Belgian girls. 



22 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

Both sisters devoted themselves to earnest, con- 
scientious study, and both made rapid progress, 
though their dispositions, as seen by their teacher, 
were in singular contrast. Monsieur Heger, though 
kind at heart, was choleric, despotic, and exacting 
as a teacher. Charlotte deferred to him with meek 
submissiveness ; but Emily disputed with him, and 
resented his self-assertion with fiery words. Never- 
theless, his judgment taught him that, while Char- 
lotte possessed the more docile nature, Emily was 
the superior genius. Speaking of the wealth of her 
imagination, the keenness of her reasoning powers, 
the strength of her imperial will, and the vigor of 
her style, he said : " She ought to have been a man !" 
He was probably right in his opinion of her supe- 
rior genius ; albeit she did not live long enough, as 
we shall see, fully to demonstrate his judgment be- 
fore the world. 

Six months of study wrought large results in 
both of these remarkable women. So apparent was 
this to Madame Heger that she proposed their con- 
tinuance at the school the following term without 
other payment than for Emily to teach music to the 
younger pupils, and for Charlotte to serve as her 
teacher of English. Emily's homesick heart pro- 
tested against this proposal, though her judgment 



TEE BRONTE SISTERS. 23 

approved it. Charlotte's ardent desire for higher 
learning inclined her to accept it with enthusiasm. 
Instruction and association had kindled her creative 
power into life. Her imagination was unconsciously 
storing up images for subsequent use, and her fancy 
busy giving shape to characters and scenes which were 
destined to be wrought into " Villette," the master- 
piece of her literary work. Her inclination to remain 
finally triumphed over Emily's homesick desires to 
return, and they entered into an agreement with 
Madame Heger to that effect. But they had scarcely 
begun their appointed work when they were sum- 
moned back to Haworth by the mortal illness of 
their aunt. On their arrival home they found 
her dead ! 

The death of their aunt made it necessary that 
one of the three sisters should henceforth remain at 
home with their father. Which should it be ? Anne 
had a good position as governess in a private fam- 
ily; Charlotte had one offer from the head of a 
young ladies' school, and another from her old 
teacher at Brussels. The former was the more profit- 
able ; but her heart longed for the intellectual activ- 
ity, the opportunity to learn, and the society of the 
light-hearted girls to be enjoyed at the latter. As 
for Emily, she preferred Haworth, with its secluded 



24 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

life and its moorland surroundings to any other 
earthly spot. It was therefore determined that she 
should remain with her father, and her sisters go to 
their school duties. 

Charlotte was not happy after her return to 
Brussels. " I returned to it," she wrote years after, 
" against my conscience, prompted by what then 
seemed an irresistible impulse. I was punished for 
my selfish folly by a total withdrawal for more than 
two years of happiness and peace of mind." 
Whence arose this state of mental unrest? Some 
attribute it, though without reason, to a love affair. 
Others see in it the throes of her awakening genius, 
the agitation of a mind quickened to a vague con- 
sciousness of power to accomplish some great work 
which she vainly struggled to define. The materi- 
als for " Villette," her masterpiece, say these critics, 
were then taking shape in her agitated soul. Hence 
these days of " storm and stress," says Mr. Reid. 
But why should the incoming of such chaotic images 
associated with a dawning consciousness of creative 
power cause disturbance in her " conscience f" Her 
confession cited above proves her disturbance was 
not mainly intellectual, but moral. "I returned to 
Brussels," she says, " against my conscience." 

What, then, was her unhappiness but the result 



THE BRONTE SISTERS. 25 

of a conflict between her inclination and her sense 
of duty ? What she had already gained at Brussels 
had unfitted her to find contentment in the monot- 
onous life of her Haworth home. It had also 
awakened aspirations, impulses, and cravings for 
that still higher intellectual development to be at- 
tained through further association with the teachers, 
Monsieur Heger especially, of her now beloved 
Pensionnat. To this inclination her conscience said, 
" It is your duty to your father and your younger 
sister to stay at Haworth." Her conscience may 
have been, probably was, super-sensitive. Never- 
theless, by subjecting it to the control of her incli- 
nation, she caused it to wound her with its tor- 
menting sting. 

This struggle, continued for nearly two years, 
necessarily curdled her feelings, and threw her into 
a morbid state of mind, which colored all her 
thoughts about herself with gloom. As her intel- 
lect gained more and more power, and her observa- 
tions on human character and life took a wider 
range, she sought to penetrate the mists which hid 
her own future. For what end am I acquiring 
knowledge and gaining power? for what work am 
I fitted? where shall I find my fitting sphere of 
action? what is " my state in life?" were queries 



26 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

which seemed to have perplexed her sensitive na- 
ture. Moreover, the fact that in one of her most 
melancholy moods, she went into a Romish church, 
entered a confessional, and poured the story of her 
perplexities into the ears of an unknown priest^ 
suggests that the problem of her relation to God 
had someting to do with her distressed state of 
mind. Her father's creed bore the stamp of Calvin- 
ism, in which there is but little balm for wounded 
minds. The unhappy girl needed the consolations 
of a more Scriptural faith during those gloomy 
months. Had she been conscious of the Redeemer's 
love, presence, and guidance, she would assuredly 
not have lived two years without "happiness and 
peace of mind." 

Her life at Brussels was brought to an end by 
a summons from her sister to return to Haworth, 
where home affairs were becoming too burdensome 
for Emily to bear alone. Tabby, their old serv- 
ant, was ill. All the house-work was on Emily's 
shoulders. The aged vicar was growing blind, and 
beginning to use strong drink more freely than had 
been his wont. Branwell, too, was sinking deeper 
and deeper in the mire of his loathsome vices. 
These ill-omened facts broke the silken bond which 
bound Charlotte to Brussels, and on the 2d of 



THE BRONT& SISTERS. 27 

January, 1844, she folded " mine bonnie love " — her 
pet phrase for Emily — in her arms within the walls 
of the 'Haworth parsonage. 

The three sisters now sought to realize their 
cherished dream of keeping a school of their own. 
As leaving their aged and almost blind father was 
now out of the question, their school must be kept 
in the gloomy old parsonage. They sent out cir- 
culars. But what mother, having seen Haworth, 
would send her daughter thither? Not one. And 
so the old vision faded away like a rainbow, and 
was lost in a cloud of disappointment. Alas for 
these poor sisters three! 

A still heavier trial awaited them. Anne had 
been governess in a family which also employed 
her brother as tutor to its boys. The bad young 
man had disgraced himself in that household. 
Ashamed of his misconduct, Anne left her pupils, 
and Branwell himself, being peremptorily dismissed, 
went home covered with dishonor. What those 
sisters endured during the two years following their 
shameless brother's return home, to be a daily shame 
and a burden on their stinted resources, can not be 
conceived, much less described. We have only 
space in this brief sketch to add that in 1848 this 
slave of dissipation died pitied by all, but regretted 



28 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

probably by none but the boon companions of his 
orgies at the Bull Inn. 

In 1845 these much-tried sisters accidentally 
discovered that, unknown to one another, they had 
all been in the habit of writing verses. This dis- 
covery led them, after much consultation, to collect 
a sufficient number of their poems to make a small 
volume, and to send the manuscript to London. 
After considerable correspondence, they found a pub- 
lisher willing to issue their book on commission. 
It came out as poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton 
Bell, names standing respectively for Charlotte, 
Emily, and Anne. Poor girls ! Their book cost 
them thirty guineas of their little store of money ; 
but, though some of the poems were not without 
merit, the volume met with very little praise and no 
sale. Thus their first attempt at authorship was a 
discouraging failure. 

Yet, though discouraged and mortified, these 
noble women did not despair. They had the courage 
of strong character, the consciousness of unrecog- 
nized literary power, a strong confidence of ultimate 
success as writers, and the pinching of pecuniary 
needs, present and prospective, to spur them to 
fresh endeavors. Accordingly, after much delibera- 
tion, they agreed that each should write a novel ! 



THE BRONTE SISTERS. 29 

Others, they said, had gained popularity and made 
money by novel- writing ; why should not we ? 

Never before were three novels produced in the 
manner pursued by these sisters. In the evening, 
after the house- work of the day was finished, they 
gathered round a table, compared notes, discussed 
plots, characters, names, and even the chapters into 
which their books were to be divided. These points 
settled, each took her pen and proceeded in silence 
with her work, far into the night. Thus working 
through many evenings, Charlotte produced " The 
Professor ;" Emily, " Wuthering Heights ;" and 
Anne, "Agnes Grey." As soon as finished, the man- 
uscripts were sent forth under the old names of 
Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, to seek a publisher. 

Dreary, disconsolate months of almost hopeless 
waiting succeeded. Their home troubles were, in- 
deed, sufficient to crush ordinary women. The par- 
son had become blind, and Charlotte had to take 
him to Manchester for treatment by an oculist. 
Branwell was still living out his dissipated and 
disgraced life at the vicarage. Emily's heart was 
saddened as the shadow of death drew nearer 
to that doomed brother. Anne's delicate health 
was sinking beneath the nightmare pressure of 
BranwelPs shame. To these trials the weight of 



30 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

repeated literary disappointments were now added. 
Publisher after publisher returned their manuscripts, 
rejected. O, unfortunate children of genius ! 

Poor Charlotte received her rejected " Professor " 
on the day of the critical operation upon her father's 
eyes, during which she was required to be present. 
Yet such was her strength of will that, despite the 
fearful strain upon her nerves, she sat down in 
her lonely chamber that same night and began 
" Jane Eyre !" 

It was well for her fame that she had this heroic 
measure of courage. Had she given way at that 
moment, the world would probably have never 
heard of the Bronte sisters. But her endurance 
saved them from oblivion. "Jane Eyre " was writ- 
ten, and, says Mr. T. W. Reid, " on August 24, 
1847, the story is sent from Leeds to London ; and 
before the year is out, all England is ringing with the 
praises of the novel and its author." Patient endur- 
ance had brought her the crown her genius had won. 

Emily and Anne were also encouraged, while 
" Jane Eyre " was in press, by the acceptance, though 
on wretched terms, of their manuscripts. " Wuther- 
ing Heights" and "Agnes Grey" were, therefore, 
to see the light, and test the power of their fair 
authors to win such popularity as awaited their 



THE BRONTE SISTERS. 31 

sister. The decision of the world, while giving the 
credit of genius to all three, placed the palm on 
Charlotte's brow. When Emily's tragic "Wuther- 
ing Heights" appeared, says Miss Robinson, "the 
peals of triumph which acclaimed the success of 
'Jane Eyre' had no echo for the work of Ellis 
Bell." Two years later it attracted more attention, 
and won not unmixed admiration, nor enthusiastic 
praise, but recognition as a work of genius of 
marked originality, of painfully tragic power, but 
marred by many glaring faults. And when, still 
later, the story of Emily's strangely isolated life was 
given to the public, candid critics were compelled 
to accept it as a rare " curiosity in literature." But 
this recognition of its claims was never known to 
Emily. Before it was given she had become the 
bride of death. A severe cold, taken at the burial 
of her unhappy brother, whom she loved with all 
the strength of a pure, but undeserved, sisterly affec- 
tion, produced inflammation of the lungs. He had 
been her special care during the last year of his 
wretched life. His death seemed, therefore, to rob 
her of her life-work. It left her a prey to gloomy 
spirits, as well as to disease. Beneath this twofold 
burden she sunk rapidly. In December, 1848, she 
found a resting-place in the family grave. 



32 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

Anne's novel, "Agnes Grey," was too common- 
place to be widely popular. Her next work, " The 
Tenant of Wildfell Hall," was also unfavorably 
received. It was, says Mr. Reid, " a dreary and 
repulsive picture of Branwell Bronte's condition 
after his fall." Charlotte considered it a an entire 
mistake" as to its "choice of subject," inspired by 
"pure" yet "slightly morbid motives," and written 
from an impulse of mistaken duty. But public 
opinion soon became of small consequence to Anne's 
gentle spirit. In May, 1849, she, too, passed away, 
saying, as she died, to her weeping sister : 
" Take courage, Charlotte, take courage !" 
Emily had died, as Charlotte said, in " a time 
of promise." " Wuthering Heights " was the work 
of inexperienced, unfurnished, undeveloped genius, 
but showed great literary possibilities. Anne's 
genius was less promising of future achievements. 
Both had passed away in their prime, yet with the 
difference in the manner of their departure between 
faith in evangelical truth, and a vague trust in God, 
not as the father of the Lord Jesus Christ, but as 
God the Creator and Preserver of men. Hence, to 
cite Mr. Eeid, " Emily's proud spirit refused to be 
conquered, and up to the last agony, she carried 
herself as one sternly indifferent to the weaknesses 



THE BRONTfi SISTERS. 33 

of the flesh, including that final weakness which 
must conquer all of us in the end. Anne found 
consolation, pure and deep, in her religious faith, 
and she died cheerfully, in the firm belief that she 
was entering into that fuller life which lay beyond 
the grave." 

Bereft of her beloved sisters, compelled by filial 
obligation to make her home in the dreary parson- 
age with her uncompanionable father, and to live in 
the midst of people with none of whom could she 
form personal friendships, poor Charlotte's life was 
now sad and dreary. Yet she did not lose heart 
and hope, but did what her hand found to do. The 
key-note of her life is contained in this sentiment, 
found in a letter to her friend Ellen : " Submission, 
courage, exertion when practicable — these seem to 
be the weapons with which we must fight life's 
long battle." 

Under the inspiration of this thought, she sought 
refuge from the monotony of her household duties 
in writing what some of her best critics esteem as 
" the brightest and healthiest of her works." She 
named it " Shirley." In that character she imper- 
sonated her beloved Emily, as she did her friend 
Ellen in that of Caroline Helston. Her work being 
inspired by the two strongest affections of her strong 



34 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

nature, and constructed with artistic skill improved 
by previous practice, the reader will not be surprised 
to learn that when " Shirley " appeared, as it did 
in the Autumn of 1849, it was greeted with a loud 
outcry of praise, both by the critics and the public. 
" Jane Eyre " had given her reputation as a writer 
of more than ordinary power. " Shirley " increased 
and established that reputation. When she visited 
London in 1850, her presence was courted by liter- 
ary men and women. Had she been at all disposed 
to seek notoriety, she might have been lionized. 
But her shrinking, reserved nature, her constrained 
manner, her precise and formal modes of speech, 
her unfashionable dress, and her somewhat insignifi- 
cant person, all unfitted her to shine as a queen in 
cultivated society. In such a nature as hers, this 
unfitness awakened no regret. Society had recog- 
nized her genius. The sale of her books had relieved 
her from the fear of prospective want. Could she 
have been favored with good health and placed in 
a home of beauty and affection, despite the deep 
darkness of the past, she might have yet found her 
life, if not joyous, yet peaceful and happy. 

But at present, at least, this condition was not 
within her reach. New trials yet awaited her. She 
had an offer of marriage from a pertinacious suitor 



THE BRONT& SISTERS. 35 

whom she could respect, but to whom she could not 
give that affection which her pure mind thought 
necessary to a happy marriage. She finally refused 
him, but his earnestly pressed suit cost her no small 
measure of mental agitation. Besides this, she was 
oppressed with household cares, made weighty by the 
ill-health and querulousness of her exacting father. 
Next came the severe strain of great physical weak- 
ness. Amid all this, her unconquered spirit grap- 
pled with the task of writing yet another book, 
which an admiring critic, with some exaggeration, 
calls " a marvelous book, a masterpiece destined to 
hold its own among the ripest and finest fruits of 
English genius." 

This work, which she named "Villette," cost 
her vastly more than the ordinary mental strain of 
continued writing under the pressure of nervous 
prostration and bodily weakness. It contains the 
bitter experiences of her own deeply shadowed life. 
It is in no mean sense an autobiography of her own 
inner life, disguised by names and circumstances 
invented to conceal her personality from the public, 
and from all, indeed, but the very few to whom she 
had revealed more or less of the secrets of her sin- 
gular, but remarkable, nature. To reproduce these 
sad experiences with the pen was to live much of 



36 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

her isolated, yet troubled, life over again. It was 
to drink daily for many weary months, and that for 
a second time, from a cup of anguish such as is 
rarely put to the lips of the children of sorrow. 
Yet she drank it bravely. And when " Yillette " 
appeared, in 1853, it was received, not with the vul- 
gar acclamation awarded to a popular novel, but 
with the more serious praise due to a book which, 
though a novel in form, is yet " such a heart- 
history," says Reid, " as remains to this day without 
a rival in the school of English fiction to which it 
belongs. . . . From critics of every school and 
degree there came up a cry of wonder and admira- 
tion, as men saw out of what simple characters and 
commonplace incidents genius had evoked this 
striking work of literary art." 

But what is fame to a crushed heart? Charlotte 
Bronte was taught its utter emptiness by her cruel 
experience during this period of her greatest literary 
triumph. While " Villette" was in preparation, Mr. 
Arthur Mchols, her father's curate, became a suitor 
for her hand. Unsuspected by her, he had for 
some time so studied her character as to become 
strongly bound to her by a deep affection, based on 
profound respect. When he made a declaration of 
his regard Charlotte was taken by surprise, but soon 



THE BRONTE SISTERS. 37 

felt that such a manly love as he offered her was 
the great need of her desolate heart. His devoted 
attentions awakened hopes so bright that at first 
she scarcely dared to cherish them. When she did, 
like a true daughter, she spoke of the curate's pro- 
posal of marriage to her father. But that stern old 
man, whose cold heart and iron will had blasted the 
lives of his wife and children, flew into such a furi- 
ous passion that she was terrified. For a moment 
her new-born love for her suitor struggled with her 
strong sense of filial obligation. The latter con- 
quered, and while her heart throbbed with agonized 
feeling, she heroically pledged her word to give Mr. 
Nichols a distinct refusal on the morrow. 

The refusal was given. The curate resigned, 
and left Ha worth with a grieved spirit j but Char- 
lotte, while the voices of the public were ringing 
out the praises of her genius, began to sink beneath 
the obdurate refusal of her cruel father to consent 
to her marriage. A few months sufficed to show 
the fatal nature of the wound he had inflicted on 
the daughter who had sacrificed so much for his 
sake. Her health and strength evidently declined. 
The vicar, who loved her as much as his cold 
nature permitted him to love any one, and who had 
rejected Mr. Nichols only because he was not a man 



38 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

of wealth and note, finally relented. He bade Char- 
lotte send for the curate. Mr. Nichols obeyed her 
summons, returned to Haworth, freely forgave the 
irate old vicar, and on June 29, 1854, Charlotte 
became his happy bride. 

Their marriage, during its brief continuance, was 
a source of sweet content to this sorely tried woman, 
and of happiness to both. But it soon became a 
blighted flower. After a few months Charlotte's 
health began to decline, and on the 31st of March, 
1855, she passed from dreary Haworth into the 
beautiful land where the weary are at rest. 

The news of her death was received by the read- 
ing public with deep regret. The publication of 
her memoir by Mrs. Gaskell, shortly after, was a 
revelation concerning her and her sisters which 
astonished all who had read their works, and it 
gave a fresh impetus to their sale. People wondered 
how women so unfavorably situated could write 
such books, and many were filled with admiration 
for the nobility of character they had displayed. 
Mrs. GaskelPs memoir also led to the publication 
of Charlotte's first novel, " The Professor/' which 
had failed to find a publisher in the days of her 
obscurity. This book, without detracting from, added 
nothing to her celebrity, albeit it illustrated the 



THE BRONTE SISTERS. 39 

hopeful spirit of her life during her stay at Brussels. 
The memoir was a fitting supplement to the novels, 
which can not be adequately interpreted without it 
or some other of the portraitures of these gifted 
sisters which have been since given to the world. 

These sisters three, though far from perfect in 
their lives and characters, will always command a 
large measure of admiration, not for genius only, 
but for the courage which enabled them to battle 
not without success, against conditions of life calcu- 
lated in themselves to prevent the healthy develop- 
ment of either their minds or hearts. Motherless 
almost from infancy, having a father who seems to 
have been strangely deficient in paternal sympathies, 
living isolated from society in a drearily situated 
home, left much to themselves, without sufficient 
suitable instruction during the years of childhood, 
unsupplied with reading that contained suitable food 
for thought, their religious conceptions formed after 
the pattern of that pitiless iron creed known as ultra 
Calvinism, and having no examples of evangelical 
piety before their eyes, is it any wonder that they 
were eccentric, more or less morbid, shy, reticent, 
ignorant of society and its ways, unconventional, 
and somewhat self-willed? Nay. They could, in- 
deed, have scarcely been otherwise. The wonder 



40 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

is that, with all their disadvantages, they became 
true, brave, courageous, affectionate, dutiful women, 
large in heart and brain, and able to command and 
hold, if not the unqualified admiration, yet the 
respectful attention and affectionate regard of the 
reading world. Achieving all this under such un- 
favorable opportunities, they inspire one with the 
belief that, had they been favored with only ordi- 
nary means of self-culture, ethical teaching, and 
spiritual training, they would have taken the 
highest rank as Christian women and as writers. 



lllllllllll!!llll!ll!ll!lll!lll|i||ll!!llliilll!lillW 
IllllOIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIO 



II. 



•'Virtue shall enroll your names 
In Time's eternal records." —Glover. 

" Her cheek was pale ; but resolved and high 
Was the word of her pen." 

tjJfgN Duyckinck's " Cyclopedia of American Liter- 
GtP ature " it is said that Hannah Adams " was 
probably the first woman in the country to 
devote herself to a literary life, and this, too, at 
a time when the temptations which such a career 
could offer to either sex were insignificant, either in 
view of fame or gain." And the writers of the 
" Introductory Notes " to her memoirs say, "Among 
those who have overcome great and peculiar diffi- 
culties in the pursuit of knowledge, she holds a dis- 
tinguished place. She became a literary woman 
when literature was a rare accomplishment in this 

country." 

4 41 



42 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

These statements place Miss Adams before the 
reader as an exceptional woman, standing in a posi- 
tion before the public which no American lady had 
previously ventured to occupy. Hence the reader 
very naturally inquires, what influences moved her 
to, try her fortune as a writer. What were the qual- 
ities and the circumstances which helped her to win 
success ? A glance at the facts in her simple record 
will show that her own impulses, quickened by the 
necessities of her condition, gave inspiration to her 
pen, and that by the forces of her strong character 
she made her very unfavorable circumstances bend 
to her will. In no narrow sense, therefore, she was 
the architect of her own fortune— a self-made 
woman. 

Miss Adams was a native of the pleasant town 
of Medfield, Massachusetts, where she was born in 
1756. Her father was in>a false position; that is, 
in a pursuit for which both his health and tastes 
unfitted him. In his boyhood he had been through 
a course of preparation for the university, but when 
he was of age to enter, his parents, thinking him 
physically too delicate to leave home, obliged him 
to settle on their large farm. Either from lack of 
capacity or will, he did not greatly prosper as a 
farmer, and therefore, after his marriage, he rented 



HANNAH ADAMS. 43 

his farm and opened a store, which he stocked not 
only with dry-goods and groceries, but also with a 
large assortment of books, better suited, perhaps, to 
the popular demand than to his own tastes. 

Hannah's mother was a sensitive and delicate 
lady. It is not strange, therefore, that both father 
and mother being infirm, the daughter inherited 
from them a feeble constitution and a very excitable 
nervous system. The tenderness of her mother led 
her to permit Hannah to form habits of " debili- 
tating softness. " The family being then in affluent 
circumstances, there appeared no probability that 
she would ever be obliged to depend for support 
upon her own exertions. Why, then, should she not 
be tenderly reared? What need of alarm because 
the child disliked childish amusements, or because 
she was not sufficiently strong regularly to attend 
the district school, or because she was so timid and 
shy that she shrank from appearing in company ? 
Would she not, despite all these hindrances to the 
acquisition of qualities necessary to combat with the 
difficulties of life, be a dove sheltered in the soft 
nest of a home made comfortable by wealth and 
happy by parental fondness ? 

So it seemed for a time. But when this delicate 
child was only ten years old her mother died. Not 



44 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

long after, her aunt, who was a second mother to her, 
died also. A few years later her father, plundered 
by the men who managed his farm and unfortunate 
in his business transactions, became bankrupt. Then 
the once affluent farmer and store-keeper was re- 
duced to the necessity of taking boarders to eke 
out a living. Thus the prospects of our sensitive, 
delicate young maiden were no longer bright, but 
wrapped in folds of darkness. 

Nevertheless there was, though scarcely as yet 
perceptible, a silver lining to those frowning clouds. 
This lining consisted in the development of the 
maiden's intellectual powers and literary tastes. 
True, she had not learned much during her occa- 
sional attendance at the district school, since in those 
early days, as Hannah's biographer remarks, the 
"village school-master much resembled Goldsmith's, 
of whom 

1 The village all declared how much he knew ; 
'T was certain he could write, and cipher too.' " 

But nature had given her an " ardent curiosity and 

a desire to acquire knowledge." Her first concept 

of heaven, she writes, " was of a place where we should 

find our thirst for knowledge fully gratified." She 

had of her own sweet will fed this appetite for 

knowledge by much reading of the books in her 



HANNAH ADAMS. 45 

father's large library and on the shelves in his store. 
Her memory, too, was very tenacious. And though 
she preferred novels, romances, and poems to more 
solid reading, yet she had not wholly refrained from 
poring over the pages of historians and biographers. 
And when her father had among his boarders some 
educated gentlemen, who, drawn to her probably by 
the charms of her amiable character, offered to aid 
her studies, she gladly accepted their offer, and soon 
made such rapid progress in the rudiments of Latin, 
Greek, logic, and geography, that not many years 
after she actually fitted three young men for college ! 
Of the extent of her early reading she writes, 
" Perhaps few of my sex have perused more books 
at the age of twenty than I had." 

But it was now necessary that Hannah should 
do something toward her own support. Poverty 
had come to stand like an armed man at her father's 
door, and to compel her to be a bread-winner. 
Physically unfitted for laborious employment, she 
took to "weaving lace with bobbins on a cushion." 
"When this fairly profitable work ceased to find pur- 
chasers, as it did after the reopening of our commerce 
with Europe at the close of the War of the Revolu- 
tion, she took to spinning, to weaving, and then to 
braiding straw. Do what she would, however, her 



46 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

pecuniary returns were barely sufficient to keep the 
wolf of want from her door. To add to her trials, 
her eyes were subject to inflammation and her gen- 
eral health was feeble. "And yet," she cheerily 
said, " I had then enjoyments of which the rich have 
no idea. When I had any work brought in, that 
would enable me to earn a few shillings by which I 
might buy paper or any articles of stationery, I 
engaged in writing with an interest that beguiled 
the monotony of my life." There was pleasure in 
this opportunity to earn a little money, but it was 
only such pleasure as the starving man enjoys when 
a plateful of bread is given him with which to sat- 
isfy the pangs of hunger for a season. It did not 
remove the cloud which shrouded her prospects, nor 
free her from .the anxieties which gnawed at her 
heart like a worm hidden in a rosebud. 

The pecuniary needs of Miss Adams spurred her 
into the field of authorship. She had already be- 
gun to write for her own improvement, having been 
moved thereto by the perusal of some passages from 
" Broughton's Dictionary," giving an account of 
the various religious denominations in the world. 
These passages piqued her curiosity. She wished 
to know more than they contained concerning opin- 
ions, to maintain which so many different sects 



HANNAH ADAMS. - 47 

existed. Hence she read all the books on the ques- 
tion that she could procure. The lack of candor and 
charity shown in many of those works disgusted 
her kindly nature ; and she forthwith began to com- 
pile a manuscript in which she gave her own views 
of their agreements and differences, but with no 
thought at the time of offering her compilation to 
the public. But when her lace became unsalable, 
because of the renewed importation of foreign laces 
after the war, and her other employments proved 
insufficient for her support, she bravely resolved to 
enlarge her plan, and give her "View of Keligions" 
to the world. " It was desperation," said she in 
after years, " and not vanity that induced me to 
publish." 

It was a bold project for a mind so poorly pre- 
pared by previous suitable studies to treat the many 
difficult problems involved. It required much pa- 
tient research and varied reading. But her courage 
was equal to the height of her ambitious purpose, 
and so also was her perseverance. She sought dili- 
gently for the books required, read them carefully, 
weighed their opinions in . the scale of charity, 
abridged their contents, grew enthusiastic over her 
task, and finally completed it. She was then twenty- 
eight years old. 



48 * SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

The manuscript was ready for the press; but 
how was it to be published? Her father, with 
little business judgment, seems to have managed to 
find a printer, who, after she, aided by her father, 
had procured some four hundred subscribers for it, 
brought out the volume, pocketed the proceeds, and 
gave her fifty copies, for which she had to find 
purchasers, as the pitiful return for her toil ! Alas, 
poor girl ! She had fallen into the hands of a thor- 
oughly selfish man. 

It is not surprising, therefore, that, when this 
pecuniary disappointment was added to the exhaus- 
tion caused by her severe mental toil in preparing 
the book, she became the victim of severe nervous 
prostration. For a time it seemed as if disease 
would speedily terminate both her labors and her 
life. At last, by Heaven's blessing on the skillful 
measures of her physician, she was restored to 
health. 

She was now cheered by information from her 
selfish printer, that there was a demand for a second 
edition of her book. Would she contract with him 
to publish it? With becoming spirit she emphati- 
cally replied, "No." She would try, she thought, 
to print it for her own benefit. While looking for 
means to execute this very questionable plan, she 



HANNAH ADAMS. 49 

was most sorely smitten by the death of her elder 
sister, Elizabeth, of whom she said : " There was 
but one heart between us, and I used sometimes to 
tell her, in the overflowing of my affection, that I 
could bear to lose every thing if she was spared to 
me, but that if she were taken away I should 
surely die." Yet it pleased the Master of life to 
take her beloved Elizabeth to himself, through the 
illuminated gate of a calm Christian death. Han- 
nah's grief was for a time excessive, and she 
exclaimed : 

"The world 's a desert. Nothing now on earth 
Can yield me joy or comfort." 

But time, " the great healer," with the comfort 
she found in the study of the consolatory passages 
of Holv Writ, enabled her to recover hope and 
mental elasticity. And although her poor health, 
her pecuniary destitution, her father's poverty, and 
her brother's inability to support her, stalked like 
haunting specters in her path, she yet roused 
herself from the stupor of grief, and resolved to 
struggle with energy once more for the means of 
self-support. 

Having made additions to her "View of Re- 
ligions," she now opened a correspondence with 
several printers, with a view to its publication; 



50 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

but, except from one, recived none but ambiguous, 
meaningless replies. While in Boston seeking to 
negotiate with that one, she was fortunately intro- 
duced by a friend to the Kev. Mr. Freeman, a large- 
hearted man, who aided her so judiciously and 
effectively, that in 1791 the second edition of her 
work was published. It was so successful that, from 
her share in its proceeds, she was placed, she says, 
"in a comfortable situation ;" she paid her debts, 
and "put out a small sum upon interest." 

Miss Adams had dedicated this edition of her 
" View of Keligions " to the venerable President 
Adams, who had already taken a sympathetic inter- 
est in her success, and with whom she occasionally 
corresponded. Though her name indicated rela- 
tionship to him, the connection could not be 
directly and positively traced. Nevertheless, in 
one of his letters to her, Mr. Adams courteously 
wrote : 

"You and I are undoubtedly related by birth, 
and, although we were both 'born in humble ob- 
scurity/ yet I presume neither of us has any cause 
to regret that circumstance. If I could ever sup- 
pose that family pride was in any case excusable, I 
should think a descent from a line of virtuous, in- 
dependent farmers, for one hundred and sixty years, 



HANNAH ADAMS. 51 

was a better fountain for it than a descent through 
royal or titled scoundrels ever since the flood." 

This was sound democratic doctrine, flattering, 
no doubt, to the practical and serious-minded Miss 
Adams, because it ranked her ancestry, as well as 
his, not among the peerage of the herald's office in 
London or Paris, but among those genuine peers 
and peeresses whose patent of nobility was earned, 
not by the sword or by flattening princes, but by 
patient industry and self-denying virtue. 

Success stimulates laudable ambition. In the 
case of Miss Adams it moved her to attempt a 
second work, called "A Summary History of New 
England." To obtain the requisite information for 
this undertaking, besides consulting the works then 
existing, she made researches among the State papers 
of Rhode Island. Hoping to gain something more 
than present subsistence from this work, she toiled 
early and late to complete it. In doing this she over- 
tasked her powers of endurance, and so injured her 
eyes that, for two years, she had to lay aside her pen. 
As soon as her eyes were restored she resumed her 
labors, finished her manuscript, and had it printed 
at her own expense in 1799. She was then forty- 
three years old, and, as she says, " derived but little 
profit" from her labor. 



52 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN, 

While writing this book it appears that she 
taught district schools in several towns during the 
Summer months, generally " boarding round," as 
the custom then was, in the homes of her pupils. 

A third edition of her " View of Religions " 
being called for, the Rev. Mr. Freeman again rendered 
her such business assistance that she obtained five 
hundred dollars for an edition of two thousand 
copies. This sum was as a cordial to one who is 
faint, and a stimulant to further efforts in her 
chosen pursuit. 

Her next production was a " Concise View of the 
Christian Religion," selected from the writings of 
eminent laymen. It was written under the serious 
difficulty of making the booksellers' shops in Bos- 
ton her places of labor, because of her need to 
consult books which she could not borrow, and 
which she was too poor to buy. When it was fin- 
ished, she could find no better publisher than a 
man who gave her the pitiful compensation of one 
hundred dollars, in books, for the copyright. It 
was published in 1804. 

With genuine New England perseverance, Miss 
Adams, still refusing to yield to discouragement 
because of the meager pecuniary fruits of her pa- 
tient labors, prepared an abridgment of her " History 



HANNAH ADAMS. 53 

of New England," for the use of schools. She was 
very sanguine that this work would fill her purse; 
but when it was finished she was grieved to find that 
it had been anticipated by a similar book, from the 
pen of the Rev. Jedediah Morse, a well-known and 
accomplished clergyman. Nevertheless, despite this 
formidable obstacle to its success, after some delay, 
she had it put to press. And then — alas for this 
patient and much-tried lady! — her printer failed 
before it was published, and she gained not a penny 
from it. Singularly enough, she met with a similar 
misfortune two years after, while a second edition 
was in the hands of another party ! It seemed as 
if her mettle was destined to be tested to the utter- 
most by untoward circumstances. 

But her impulse to write was still vigorous, and 
her courage so undismayed that she undertook still 
another work, requiring wider research than any of 
her previous books. She would write a history 
of the Jews, a formidable task even for one in 
vigorous health and possessing a full knowledge of 
the subject. Yet she undertook it with her usual 
enthusiasm, removing first to Dedham, and then to 
Boston, that she might find access to the standard 
authorities which were to be the basis of her compi- 
lation. She had previously formed the acquaintance 



54 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

of the Kev. Mr. Buckniinster, the eloquent and 
learned pastor of Brattle Street Church, and he gen- 
erously gave her the unlimited use of his valuable 
library. President Adams invited her to Quincy, 
with liberty to explore the alcoves of his library in 
search of information. The Athenseuni also gave 
her the free use of its literary treasures. Several 
gentlemen of high position, impressed by her zeal, 
ability, and character, favored her with their coun- 
sels; and ladies of the highest social standing took 
deep interest in her work and welfare. Better even 
than all this recognition of her worth, was the fact 
that these ladies and gentlemen voluntarily secured 
her an annuity, which relieved her of anxiety with 
respect to her future, and left her with liberty, un- 
embarassed by care, to devote herself to her darling 
pursuits. 

Miss Adams unconsciously betrayed one secret 
of her working capacity while gathering materials 
for her history of the Jews in the library of Pres- 
ident Adams. Struck with the rapidity of her 
examinations of the heavy folios containing the 
writings of the fathers, he pleasantly questioned 
her one day as to their contents. Her ready replies 
surprised him. They showed that, while rapidly 
glancing from page to page, she had actually culled 



HANNAH ADAMS. 55 

from them all they contained apropos to her pro- 
posed work. Quickness of perception, with a power 
of abstraction from all but the work in hand, and 
a most tenacious memory, made her a marvelous 
gatherer of facts and ideas. In the library of the 
Athenaeum, too, her abstraction was such that she 
was sometimes absolutely unconscious of what passed 
around her. When spending a day in its alcoves, 
as she often did, she took no note of time. When 
the hour of noon struck, the librarian on several 
occasions tried to notify her in vain. Seeing her 
so absorbed in her book, that nothing less than 
discourteous urgency could break her reveries, he 
would give up the attempt, lock the door of the 
building, and go home to his luncheon. On his 
return he would find her in the same spot, unaware 
that it was past noon, and that she had been the 
sole occupant of the library for the preceding hour. 

After mentioning this fact to her one day, a 
friend asked, " Is it true, Miss Adams, that you 
have been thus lost to every thing but your work?" 

" It is much exaggerated," she smilingly replied. 
" I do n't think it ever happened more than once 
or twice." 

But who was the better witness in such a case? 
Doubtless the observant librarian, not the abstracted 



56 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

student. But may not these abstracted moods account 
both for her ability as a compiler and for the physical 
exhaustion which so frequently followed her weeks 
and months of application ? A body lacking con- 
stitutional soundness could but suifer in some of its 
functions from such periods of profound mental 
abstraction. 

Aided by the ample materials found in these 
libraries, Miss Adams threw her whole strength into 
her proposed history, and opened correspondence 
with some learned men and women in Europe, seek- 
ing information not to be found in American col- 
lections of books. Her zeal was, however, greater 
than her strength. Too close application again 
affected her eyes; her father's death depressed her 
spirits; the weakness of advancing age began to 
oppress her. Nevertheless, she pressed on in spite 
of all obstacles, finding happiness despite her afflic- 
tions, in writing, and, she says, " I completed my 
work in 1812." It was published in Boston the 
same year. Six years after, an edition of it was 
issued in London by the society for promoting 
Christianity among the Jews. Its English editor 
commended it highly as a book well calculated to be 
useful in the special work of the society he repre- 
sented. No doubt this compliment, which was shown 



HANNAH ADAMS. 57 

to be sincere by the publication of the book — a 
stately octavo volume of 576 pages — was very grat- 
ifying to its modest author. It must, have cheered 
her spirits, which were oppressed at times by her 
increasing infirmities. It was a recognition of her 
literary ability by highly respectable parties who were 
well qualified judges, and an assurance that her 
hope of benefiting the Jews by her labor was likely 
to be attained. 

It is pleasing to know that the latter years of 
this good lady's " troubled life " were spent in com- 
fort, and in the enjoyment of congenial society, in 
or near the city of Boston. The extreme delicacy 
of her health was of course a burden that no meas- 
ure of human sympathy could remove ; but her faith 
in Holy Writ made her strength equal to that bur- 
den, and kept her cheerful until, in 1832, God sent 
the angel of death to loose the bonds of life. Not 
long before his messenger -came, she said smilingly 
to a visiting friend: 

" I believe some people think I have lived long 
enough, but I am willing to remain as long as it 
pleases God to continue my life;" and then, point- 
ing to the landscape without, she added, "How 
can any body be impatient to quit such a beau- 
tiful world?" 



58 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

It is not often that a person in feeble health, at 
the age of seventy-six, feels life to be so attractive 
and earth so beautiful as this latter remark proves 
Miss Adams did. But her heart was a fountain of 
cheerfulness. She loved to live, because to her life 
had always been thought, hope, action. She had 
loved the beautiful, both in the moral and the 
material world. She had always aimed at the high- 
est good within reach of her powers. Though 
excessively timid, even to shyness, she yet, when in 
society, charmed all she met by her modest simplicity, 
affectionate tenderness of spirit, and unique, winning 
manners. Her character, without being eccentric, 
was original. It is not surprising, therefore, that 
in old age she found enough of friendship, of sym- 
pathy, of good in life, to love it still ; albeit she 
had also sufficient faith in the great All-Father to 
look to life beyond the grave, if not with the 
warmth of enthusiastic desire, yet with the calmness 
of a well-grounded and tranquil hope. 

As to her literary ability, it must suffice here to say 
that, if not of the highest rank, as is not pretended, 
it was yet sufficient to command the respect of some 
of the best minds of her times, and to win the atten- 
tion of many readers. Her books, particularly her 
"View of Religions," met, if they did not fully 



HANNAH ADAMS. 59 

satisfy, a want of her generation, and contributed in 
their measure to the cause of righteousness. In 
producing them, as we have seen, under difficulties 
which few women could have surmounted, she gave 
her sex an example of perseverance and strength 
of purpose worthy of imitation. She was, in truth, 
a noble-minded, honorable, true woman — a pioneer 
of the numerous ladies who have since contributed 
to the literature of America, and specially deserving 
respect, because the productions of her pen were not 
only free from moral blemishes, but positively pure, 
adapted, not to injure, nor merely to amuse, but to 
promote the best interests of mankind. 



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— -^o— — o«~ — o- — *o- — -o- — -o- — -o- — -o- — -o~ —o~ — -o- — -o- — -o- — -o— — o— — o- — -o— = 
= ^|\ s\\ •in /j\ X|\ / t \ •jv ^|\ /»j\ / ? \ ^|\ •is s^\ r ( \ /|\ X|\ ^|\ == 

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III. 

Bli^akeir) rrerjfiss. 



"The noblest minds their virtue prove 
By pity, sympathy, and love; 
These, these are feelings truly fine, 
And prove their owner half divine." 

— COWPER. 

HAKESPEARE said: "We are born to do 
benefits." A less distinguished poet wrote, 

" The height of virtue is to serve mankind ;" 
and Beattie, addressing the high-born and 
the mighty, sings, 

" Ye proud, ye selfish, ye severe, 
How vain your mask of state! 
The good alone have joy sincere, 
The good alone are great." 

If these sentiments have a right within the realm 
of truth, then the lady whose deeds are outlined in 
this sketch may be properly classed among queenly 
women. Her intellectual gifts entitle her to recog- 



• EL1ZABE TH PRENTISS. 6 1 

nition as equal to very many of the daughters of 
genius whose pens have won the pleased attention 
of the world. But her goodness, her devotion to 
the service of mankind, and her deep sympathy 
with the children of affliction, place her in a higher 
rank than those whose fame reposes on literature 
alone. These gave pleasure to mankind by the 
airy creations of their imaginations, but Mrs. 
Prentiss wrought among men as one who deeply 
felt the truth that we are born, not merely to 
charm others, but " to do benefits " to ail within 
our reach. 

Elizabeth Prentiss was the daughter of the Eev. 
Dr. Edward Payson, a Congregational clergyman, 
who was one of the best, most devout men of 
modern times. She was born in Portland, Maine, 
October 26, 1818, " the fifth of eight children." Her 
home was a nest of tender, parental love, in which 
natural affection was purified and exalted by an 
uncommon measure of piety, and refined by the 
graces of intellectual culture. 

When a child Elizabeth is described by her 
husband and biographer* as "a dark-eyed, delicate 
little creature of sylph-like form, reserved and shy 

*"The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss," author of 
"Stepping Heavenward," by. George L. Prentiss. 



62 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

in the presence of strangers, of a sweet disposition, 
and very intense in her sympathies. Her constitu- 
tion was feeble, and she inherited from her father 
his high-strung, nervous temperament." She was 
venturesome, frolicsome, uncommonly susceptible to 
impressions, and so moved by a spectacle or story 
of suffering that she trembled with excitement, and 
was ready to make any possible sacrifice to relieve 
it. Speaking of her strong sympathies one day, 
Dr. Payson said, with playful exaggeration : 

" She will be in danger some day of marrying 
a blind man, or a helpless cripple, out of pure 
sympathy." 

Her love for her father was the strongest pas- 
sion of Elizabeth's child-life. To be with him was 
her chief delight. His praise was ecstasy, his 
absence her sorest grief. She seemed to have inher- 
ited many of his characteristics, both mental and 
physical. His piety gave inspiration to her religious 
affections, and she never forgot the impression made 
upon her mind by finding him on his face before 
God in agonizing prayer, when, by mistake, she 
rushed one day into his study. And when he died 
in 1827, she being then only nine years old, she 
tasted her first bitter grief. But though dead, his 
influence remained with her to the end of her life. 



ELIZABETH PRENTISS. 63 

Some three years later Elizabeth joined the 
visible Church. Young as she was, she compre- 
hended not a little of the nature and duties of 
Christian discipleship. Early Christian nurture had 
taught and trained her in the way of faith. And 
she continued to adorn her profession; first in her 
mother's house, next in the schools she attended, 
and then in the wider spheres of adult life. 

Notwithstanding the great loss she suffered in 
the death of her devout father, her youth was passed 
under conditions highly favorable to the right 
development of her mind and character. Her 
mother, who had been reared in the lap of wealth, 
which had been lost in the fluctuations of her 
father's mercantile business, was a lady of a noble 
nature, sympathetic in feeling, kind in act, firm yet 
gentle in ruling her household, and skillful in adapt- 
ing her discipline to the peculiarities of her chil- 
dren. The vivacity of her well-informed mind 
made her a delightful companion, and drew around 
her a charming circle of cultivated friends. She 
was withal a superior house-mother, and therefore 
it was that Elizabeth's youth was passed in a home 
which, though not rich in material things, was, 
intellectually, religiously, and in its domestic rou- 
tine, in no mean degree an ideal home. 



64 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

To be reared in such a delightful home was a 
special gift of Providence. Whether Elizabeth 
should reap its full benefits depended largely Upon 
herself. To her credit be it said, she was spontane- 
ously faithful to her rare opportunity. Sent to the 
best schools in Portland and, for a season, to one in 
Ipswich, Massachusetts, she studied with diligence, 
and made rapid progress. In the home circle, 
though she had occasional fits of unamiable temper, 
yet her sparkling wit, her cheerful temper, her warm 
filial and sisterly affection, made it questionable 
whether she or her learned sister Louisa was the 
life of the household. She spent her leisure mo- 
ments in reading, in rambling near the shores of 
Casco Bay with some beloved school friend, and in 
writing poetry. She was also much given to the 
quiet study of character, as revealed in the spirit, 
words, and actions of her associates. When only 
twenty years old she opened a school for girls in her 
mother's house, and being a " born teacher," was 
successful in securing the mental improvement and 
in winning the love of her pupils. 

Her first attempts in authorship were contribu- 
tions to the Youth's Companion, of which popular 
sheet the father of N. P. Willis was then both pub- 
lisher and editor. In writing, she simply followed 



ELIZABETH PRENTISS. 65 

the bent of her genius. Her articles attracted atten- 
tion, and gave early assurance to her friends that 
she was destined to win reputation as a writer. Her 
unique and charming letters to her relatives and 
chosen friends confirmed this impression, which was 
justified, as we shall see, by her subsequent career. 

Such was the girl-life of Elizabeth Prentiss. It 
had its trials, arising largely from the death of her 
father and the struggles for comfortable subsistence 
on the part of her mother, to which that bereave- 
ment gave rise. It had its bright side in the beauty 
of her mother's strong character, in the spiritual 
and intellectual culture of her home circle, in the 
culture and respectability of her associations, and in 
her educational advantages. In herself, nature and 
grace combined to furnish her the conditions of 
happiness and usefulness. The former endowed her 
with rare gifts of both heart and mind ; the latter, 
from the beginning, moved her to be a truly loyal 
disciple of the Lord Jesus. Such a girlhood con- 
tained the " promise and potency " of a noble 
womanhood. And to such a womanhood Elizabeth 
Payson attained, not by the neglect or careless use, 
but by the earnest improvement of her early 
opportunities. 

When Elizabeth was about twenty-one years of 



66 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

age, she passed through a spiritual "valley of the 
shadow of death." As stated above, she had made 
a profession of discipleship when twelve years old. 
From that profession she had never fallen away. 
She had, indeed, been the instrument of winning 
some of her friends and pupils to Christ in 1837-8. 
But in 1839-40 a thick cloud of darkness enveloped 
her soul, and she fell under the power of a morbid 
moral feeling. Doubt usurped the place of faith, 
and despair blotted out the visions of hope. Through 
four dreary months she endured unspeakable agonies 
of mind, seeing nothing but such vileness in herself 
and such unapproachable holiness in God as made 
it seem impossible that he could possibly love her. 
Her anguish through this gloomy period put both 
her health and life in peril. 

Most earnest Christians who are endowed with 
highly sensitive consciences, pass through a some- 
what similar, though less morbid, state of mental 
unrest as this, when God lifts them farther into the 
light of his purity. In that ineffable light they see 
sin as never before ; they look into the hitherto 
hidden depths of their hearts until they so abhor 
themselves that it seems impossible to them that 
God can ever forgive and dwell in them. The pur- 
pose of this manifestation is to lead its subject to 



ELIZABETH PRENTISS. 67 

look at the immeasurable breadth and depth of the 
infinite love of God in Christ. Elizabeth realized 
this when, after listening one Sunday to a sermon 
on the ability of Christ to save " unto the utter- 
most," her weary spirit rested itself on the love of 
Christ. Then, giving herself to admire, to love, to 
praise him, her turbulent emotions subsided, and 
were replaced with a holy peace and an exultant 
love which moved her to put self and every thing 
else aside, and to devote herself entirely to the serv- 
ice of Christ. This experience, good in itself, 
though made needlessly severe by that tendency to 
morbid feeling, which she inherited from her father, 
lifted her into a higher plane of Christian living; 
so that, says her biographer, " henceforth to her 
dying hour His will was the sovereign law of her 
existence, and her sweetest joy also." 

In 1840 we find Elizabeth in Richmond, Vir- 
ginia, successfully teaching a department in the 
school of a Mr. Persico, winning the affections both 
of her fellow-teachers and pupils, living a godly 
life, delighting her associates by her cheerful spirit 
and playful manners, and earning the gratitude of 
the parents of her pupils, because of her influence 
in elevating the characters of their children. Dur- 
ing her stay in Eichmond, she suffered very severely 



68 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

at times from a disease of the heart, which threat- 
ened to become chronic; but she was graciously- 
enabled to adorn her profession by her patience 
under suffering, as she did by her daily demeanor when 
in health. In August, 1841, "she left Richmond, 
and flew homeward like a bird to its nest." 

Her sister Louisa was married to Professor Hop- 
kins immediately after her arrival in Portland. Her 
school duties had taxed her strength too severely, 
and her supersensitive nervous system made self- 
control difficult, even in the comparative quiet of 
her maternal home. But, battling bravely against 
this hindrance, she devoted her time to the diligent 
performance of home duties, to study, to Christian 
work, and to the pursuit of still greater measures 
of God-likeness. With her peculiar temperament, 
it was scarcely possible to escape from occasional 
depression of spirits. Nevertheless, her religious 
progress was obvious, if not to herself, yet to her 
observing friends. After spending little over a year 
at home, at the earnest solicitation of Mr. Persico, 
she returned to her place in his school, where she 
remained until late in the Summer of 1843. These 
were trying months, on account of the death of 
Mrs. Persico, and the subsequent insolvency of the 
unfortunate widower. She was herself sick part of 



ELIZABETH PRENTISS. 69 

the time. Despite all these drawbacks, she did her 
duty with her wonted cheerfulness, won the hearts 
of most of her pupils, and when she returned to 
her home she was, though faint because of being 
overtasked, yet still pursuing after the highest pos- 
sible spiritual attainments. At Eichmond, as at 
Portland, she was constantly " stepping heaYenward." 

A new and sweet experience awaited her, shortly 
after her return to what she calls her "dear, good 
home." She found, as she expressed it, " the liberty 
to love." Mr. George Lewis Prentiss had the good 
fortune to win her large aifections. In his character, 
tastes, culture, and religious aspirations, she recog- 
nized the counterpart to her own, and he became 
her accepted suitor. 

To Miss Pay son, says her biographer, " love, 
after religion, was the holiest and most wonderful 
reality of life." So passionate was her desire to be 
truly and strongly loved, and so intense was the love 
she gave to others, that her betrothal put her spir- 
itual life to a crucial test. Happily, she both saw 
and felt her danger, saying in a letter to her cousin, 
" I am tempted to seek my heaven in so loving !" 
To her betrothed she wrote, " If ever there was a 
heart tempted to idolatry, to give itself up fully, 
utterly, with perfect abandonment of every other 



70 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

hope and interest, to an earthly love, so is mine 
tempted now." Again writing to her cousin, she 
says of her lover : "lam afraid of love. There is 
no other medium save that of the happiness of lov- 
ing and being loved, by which my affections could 
be effectually turned from divine to earthly things. 
Am I not, then, on dangerous ground? Yet God 
mercifully shows me that it is so, and when I think 
how he has saved me hitherto, through sharp tempta- 
tions, it seems wicked distrust of him not to feel that 
he will save me through those to come." 

Thus guarding her heart against the excess of 
earthly love, she was enabled to keep it centered on 
the Highest. The letters to her betrothed, which, 
in their ardor, simplicity, and frank confessions, 
remind one of Meta's letters to Klopstock, are filled 
with the aspirations of a soul which was aflame with 
a love for God, still more ardent than that which she 
felt for him. And thus she solved the problem of 
giving her* betrothed as warm a love as a good man 
could rightly claim, without taking from her divine 
Lord that supreme affection which she had already 
given him. Her spirituality did not, therefore, hin- 
der, but really helped, the legitimate action of her 
womanly affections. 

During the months of her betrothal, she had to 



ELIZABETH PRENTISS. 71 

undergo a terrible trial of her physical courage. A 
tumor in her neck made it necessary that she should 
suffer the cruel pains of the surgeon's knife. The 
first operation she endured heroically ; but for some 
reason it was not successful, and she had to submit 
a second time to its torture. There was no chloro- 
form used at that time to deaden sensibility. Dur- 
ing an hour and a quarter she bore up under the 
agony caused by the knife and needle, with a forti- 
tude which compelled the admiration of Dr. Warren, 
the skillful operator. The strong will which had 
kept her feet " stepping heavenward " despite many 
temptations, made her a heroine when subjected to 
physical pains kindred to those of martyrdom. 

In April, 1845, Miss Pay son became the bride of 
the Rev. George L. Prentiss, and, for the ensuing five 
years and a half, had her home in New Bedford, Mass., 
Mr. Prentiss being the newly ordained pastor of the 
South Trinitarian Church in that busy city. Un- 
like some ministers' young wives, who abstain from 
active work in the Church on the idle plea that such 
work belongs not to them, but to their husbands, 
Mrs. Prentiss gave herself heartily to such spheres 
of action as were open to her. With a wisdom 
beyond her years, she seized on the kind of work 
for which she was naturally best fitted. Her pecu- 



72 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

liarly sympathetic nature prepared her to be an angel 
of mercy to the sick, and to such as, being in trouble, 
stood in need of sympathy. Accordingly, she made 
herself the bearer of balm to wounded hearts. Her 
natural shyness caused her to be reserved in such 
large companies as she was often invited to meet; 
but, while shrinking from conversation with elderly 
people, she would gather around her such young 
persons as were present, and interest them with an 
entertaining and instructive story, to which they 
listened with profit and delight. In private con- 
versation with individuals, she was also very skillful 
in imparting spiritual comfort. Thus, within the 
line of her limitations, she was a true helpmeet to 
her husband in his work. Those of his people who 
understood her peculiar character loved her, and 
many not belonging to his parish, attracted by her 
sprightly manner and her literary accomplishments, 
sought her acquaintance. 

Her married life was happy, not for a short 
time only, but to the end of her days, though, like 
all human lives, it was clouded at times by those 
trials that are common to our race, and by those 
which grew out of her marked idiosyncrasies. Some 
of those clouds cast their shadows upon her during 
her stay at New Bedford. With the mysterious 



ELIZABETH PRENTISS. 73 

joys of motherhood there came the cares and weari- 
ness of the nursery. With these came also the 
visitations of the death-angel. Her sister-in-law, 
Abby L. Prentiss, her mother, and her brother-in- 
law, S. S. Prentiss, were successively summoned 
into the land of the departed. To these saddening 
events, long and severe personal illness was added 
in the Winter of 1850. Nevertheless, her spiritual 
life continued to increase, and after her recovery 
she could write to her absent husband: "I can truly 
say I have not spent a happier Winter since our 
marriage, in spite of all my sickness." 

In October, 1850, her husband having accepted a 
call to the Mercer Street Presbyterian Church, New 
York, she accompanied him to that city, where she 
found a wider sphere of action, and where her gifts 
took a direction which crowned her with the honors 
of a literary reputation, and made her a blessing 
to thousands. Thirteen years had passed since she 
had written for the press, when in 1853, under the 
spur of a sudden impulse, she wrote " Little Susy's 
Six Birthdays." Time, experience, reading, and a 
habit of observing the working of her own mind, 
and of studying the characters of others, of children 
especially, had stored her mind with facts which 
her sprightly genius enabled her to readily weave 



74 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

into quaint and lively story. Her first work took 
its place at once in the best class of books for chil- 
dren. Its popularity stimulated her to write, and 
the public to buy her next production, " The Flower 
of the Family." " Henry and Bessie " was equally 
well received, as were also "Susy's Six Teachers," 
"Susy's Six Servants," and other juvenile books, 
which her fertile and charming pen subsequently 
produced. Between 1853 and 1879 she gave twenty- 
five volumes to the public. 

The most important of these productions was 
"Stepping Heavenward," published in 1869. 
Though inferior as a literary production to the 
" Diary of Kitty Trevelyan," of which it constantly 
reminds one, it was yet immensely popular both 
in America and Europe, and was, without doubt, 
very useful to thousands who, like herself, were 
seeking to be truly and wholly devoted to Christ. 
It is evidently a transcript of her own experience, 
an autobiography, not of her exterior but of her 
interior life. She was a keen self-anatomist, and a 
close observer of the thoughts and conflicts of her 
own heart. Like her devout and pure-minded 
father, she was, as already stated, much given to de- 
pressed and, at times, even morbid states of feeling. 
Her sensibilities were exquisitely keen, and naturally 



ELIZABETH PRENTISS. 75 

disposed her to attach an exaggerated importance 
to the words and actions of others. She was, more- 
over, a close but quiet observer of all whose lives 
touched hers. She had a rare insight into charac- 
ter, and what she observed she remembered. These 
qualities of mind and temperament produced an 
unusually varied religious experience, and an un- 
commonly clear perception of the minute and 
trifliug incidents which, by being misinterpreted, 
often disturb the harmonies of family and social 
life. Hence it came to pass, when Mrs. Prentiss 
put much of herself and her friends into a book 
written with dashing sprightliness, with a frankness 
which is refreshing, and seasoned with a quiet, quaint 
humor, which ripples over nearly every page, that 
the religious public read it with avidity. Almost 
every one found something in it that touched some 
phase of his own experience, and photographed 
either his own foibles or those of his acquaintances. 
To many who were burdened with vexatious house- 
hold trials it was helpful, because it taught them 
valuable lessons of patient endurance. lSTor was it 
without value to the spiritual life of many per- 
plexed believers, in that it taught them to take 
cheerful and trustful views of the Divine goodness. 
On the other hand, it may be questioned whether 



76 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

its pictures of a mind excessively given to self- 
analysis were not calculated to encourage rather 
than to cure that morbid habit which is so detri- 
mental to healthy spiritual development. Minds 
naturally inclined to much self-anatomy, or moved 
to it by errors of creed, are more likely to sink 
into "the depths" with the Katy of the volume, 
than to rise with her to those highlands of cheer- 
fulness and hope to which she was accustomed to 
ascend by sudden bounds, but from which she also 
descended with a fatal facility which a more equable 
temperament and a better-grounded Christian faith 
would have cured. Nevertheless, it is more than 
probable that " Stepping Heavenward," despite this 
defect, helped very many more than it hindered. 
Like all the other works of its author, it breathes 
a spirit of ethical purity, and its sympathy is not 
with the selfishness of the earthy, but with the active, 
self-sacrificing love of the heavenly. 

Her biographer, speaking of the motives which 
impelled her to write books, says : " From first to 
last she wrote not to get gain, or to win applause, 
but to do good." And she herself, writing to a cul- 
tivated friend who thoroughly appreciated her pro- 
ductions, said : "A woman should not live for, or 
even desire fame. This is vet more true of a Chris- 



ELIZABETH PRENTISS. 77 

tian woman. If I had not steadily suppressed all 
such ambition, I might have become a sour, disap- 
pointed woman, seeing my best work unappreciated. 
But it has been my wish to 

1 Dare to be little and unknown, 
Seen and loved by God alone.' " 

The interpretation of this last sentence is con- 
tained in the following statements from her hus- 
band's pen.- After saying that, with respect to her 
desire to do good by writing, " she had her reward, 
good measure, pressed down and running over," he 
adds: "But of that kind of reward which gratifies 
literary taste and ambition she had almost none. 
Her books, even those most admired by the best 
judges, and which had the widest circulation both 
at home and abroad, attracted but little attention 
from the press. The organs of literary intelligence 
and criticism scarcely noticed them at all. Nor is 
it known that any attempt was ever made to analyze 
any of her more striking characters, or to point out 
the secret of her power and success as a writer." 

It need surprise no one who has studied the 
spirit which animates the "organs of literary intel- 
ligence and criticism," to learn that those organs 
let the writings of Mrs. Prentiss " severely alone." 
Her spirit and theirs had few things in common. 



78 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

They would have lauded to the skies a Christless 
novel with no higher aim than the amusement of 
its readers; but for books so decidedly spiritual as 
hers, books in which literary art is held subordinate 
to religious purpose, they had no praises to bestow. 
Their editors, or most of them, not being spiritually 
minded men, could not comprehend them, and in 
their pride of intellect, probably, tossed them con- 
temptuously aside as " goody-goody " books. But 
Mrs. Prentiss could richly afford to despise their 
neglect, in view of the fact that she was constantly 
in receipt of letters from all parts of the world, 
written by intelligent persons, to whom her books 
had given light, comfort, and stimulus in their strug- 
gles with sorrow and sin. Had she done no more 
than to produce her twenty-five books, she would 
not have lived in vain. 

But she did much more. Her beautiful home 
life, her church work, and her remarkable cheerful- 
ness under much affliction, as represented in her 
" Life and Letters," are interesting and precious 
illustrations of the power of Christian faith, by 
which, though dead, she will yet speak to coming 
generations, as she did during her life-time to the 
wide circle in which it was her lot to move. As 
our outline of the movements of her life was broken 



ELIZABETH PRENTISS. 79 

at the point of her entrance upon her career of 
authorship, we will now take up its thread, and 
briefly trace the events of her career from 1853 to 
the termination of her life. 

During the five years next succeeding 1853 she 
appears to have been an almost constant pupil in 
" the school of suffering." Insomnia, mental de- 
pression, and frequent illnesses tried her faith exceed- 
ingly. In her most serious sickness she was thought 
to be dying. She herself supposed that her hour 
had come, and she joyfully set her heart on enter- 
ing heaven. She appeared at one time to be uncon- 
scious, though she was herself still aware of what 
was going on around her. Her physician had left 
a medicine to be given her in case of the extremity 
she had now reached. She had refused to take it 
several times, until her husband besought her 
to do so, expressing a hope that it might save 
her life. 

Thinking that she was at the very gate of bliss, 
she asked herself, " Will it be wrong for me to 
refuse to take this medicine ?" Her conscience told 
her it would ; and then, strong as was her longing 
to enter heaven, she finally took the medicine and 
lived. It was a great disappointment to her to be 
thus called back from heaven's door to the duties 



80* • SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

of life; not that she did not love life, but that she 
loved heaven more. 

In 1858 the failure of the health of her husband 
compelled him to resign his pastorate, and to spend 
more than two years in Europe, mostly in Switzer- 
land. As rest was what Mr. Prentiss most needed, 
they traveled very little, but found their enjoyment in 
reading, in communing with nature amid the majesty 
of Alpine scenery, and in quiet fireside fellowship. 
While in Switzerland, she gave birth to her sixth 
child. Her enjoyment of these two happy years 
was sadly broken toward the latter months of her 
stay by the prostration of her children, first with 
whooping-cough and then with scarlet fever. Her 
husband had been invited to preach for a time in 
the American Chapel at Paris. He had scarcely 
left her when the fever smote one of the children. 
The doctor, after seeing the child, informed her that, 
even though her children might escape death, yet 
she must make up her mind that it would be at 
least forty days before she could expect to leave her 
present abode. This was indeed a gloomy prospect. 
Yet, with heroic and characteristic courage, she 
resolved to face it bravely, by herself, and therefore 
wrote her husband urging him not to give up his 
engagement in Paris. Then, with true maternal 



ELIZABETH PRENTISS. 81 

fortitude, sustained by Christian faith, she gave 
herself to the task of nursing her fever-stricken 
children, aided only by the friendly strangers around 
her. After much weary watching and painful solic- 
itude she had the satisfaction of seeing her children 
again in good health. In February, 1860, she 
joined her husband in Paris. The health of Dr. 
Prentiss being greatly improved, they spent a few 
months in England, and in September of the same 
year had the pleasure of greeting old friends at home, 
and, with their four children, breathing once more 
the air of their native land. 

But neither the joys of friendship nor the air of 
home could save her from the suffering to which 
her delicate constitution seemed destined. Through 
much of the five years succeeding her return from 
Europe, she was in the furnace of chronic affliction. 
Insomnia, neuralgia, and other ailments, " aggra- 
vated by the frequent illness of her younger chil- 
dren," by the events of the War of the Eebellion, 
by the death of her beloved sister Louisa and other 
family bereavements, and by her deep sympathy 
with her husband in his arduous labors while build- 
ing a stately church edifice for the new up-town 
Church which had been organized for him out of 
his old Mercer Street Church, reduced her to a 



82 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

state of" almost continuous ill-health." She endured 
all this in the spirit of sublime submission so char- 
acteristically expressed in the following extract from 
one of her letters : 

" It is a part of God's discipline with me to 
keep me shut up a good deal more than the old 
Adam in me fancies ; but his way is absolutely per- 
fect, and I hope I would n't change it in any 
particular." 

In 1870 she was "on the mount;" her physical 
sufferings were much less, her activity in Christian 
work greater, and her soul finding almost constant 
delight in God. The writings of Madame Guyon 
and Fenelon, the latter especially, contributed much 
to her elevation of mind. The following year she 
was once more in the vale of depression, from strong 
temptation, arising largely out of her reading on 
the question of personal holiness and its instant 
attainment by an act of faith. To be holy was her 
abiding passionate desire. She regarded holiness 
as a growth, having its roots in an indwelling 
Christ, secured by habitual faith. But her standard 
was high. When told that she was looking, " not 
for Christian, but angelic perfection," she replied : 
"I see no difference in kind. Perfection is perfec- 
tion, to my mind, and I have always thought it a 



ELIZABETH PRENTISS. 83 

dangerous thing for a soul to fancy it had attained 
it. . . . If the higher life means utter sinless- 
ness, then I shall have to own that I have never 
had any experience of it." 

Evidently she was looking, not for that Christian 
perfection or perfect love for Christ which is attain- 
able, and to which, judging by her letters, she had 
already attained, but for that absolutely sinless per- 
fection which is unattainable by fallen, frail, erring 
human beings. Constant, close, unsparing self- 
inspection, in presence of that standard of holiness 
proper, not to fallen, but to unfallen man, or to 
unsinning angels, caused her quick, sharp-eyed con- 
science to whip her exquisite sensibilities as with a 
whip of scorpions. It made her " morbid, stupid," 
sometimes " wild," melancholy, and even physically 
sick. Had she but understood that " love is the 
fulfilling of the law," and that under the Gospel 
dispensation a disciple whose faith fills his heart 
with a love for Christ which is dominant, all-absorb- 
ing, and productive of ethical obedience, is held to 
be guiltless of sin, Mrs. Prentiss would have 
escaped such harassing conflicts as she passed 
through at this time. The self-questioning which 
her failure to make this discrimination occasioned, 
though measurably overcome, had such a depressing 



84 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

effect on her faith that, says her biographer, " she 
was, perhaps, never again conscious of that constant 
spiritual delight which she had once enjoyed. But, 
if less full of sunshine, her religious life was all 
the time growing deeper and more fruitful, was cen- 
tering itself more entirely in Christ, and rising faster 
heavenward. . . . Her whole being, indeed, 
seemed to gather new light and sweetness from the 
sharp discipline she had been passing through." 
She undesignedly reveals the secret of this sweet- 
ness when she # writes to a friend, " I think God has 
provided a way to perfection, and that is { looking 
unto Jesus.' " Thus, despite her theories, she was 
actually gaining holiness through faith. 

The above testimony from her husband's pen is 
amply sustained by her correspondence, as given in 
her biography, from 1873 to her departure in 1878. 
Whether in New York, where her husband in 1873, 
having resigned his parish, had become a professor 
in the Union Theological Seminary, or in Dorset, 
Vermont, where she spent the Summer months of 
the last ten years of her life, she was constantly 
doing " what she could " for the Lord she loved so 
deeply and so truly. 

In 1874 she was asked to conduct a Bible read- 
ing in Dorset. The profit she had derived the 



ELIZA BETH PRENTISS. 85 

previous Spring from such a reading, conducted by 
Miss Susan Warner, in New York, moved her to 
consent to conduct one in Dorset. Writing of its 
success, she said: "The interest in it did not flag 
all Summer, and ladies, young and old, came from 
all directions, not only to the readings, but with 
tears, to open their hearts to me. Some hitherto 
worldly ones were among the number." 

Encouraged by this success in Dorset, she began 
Bible readings in New York the ensuing Autumn. 
Her fascinating manners, her cheerful spirit, her 
apt illustrations, her wide religious reading, her 
rich and varied experience, and, above all, the spir- 
ituality of her mind, eminently qualified her for 
this mode of Christian work. She continued it 
both during her Summer residence in Dorset, and 
in the Winter at New York, until her last sickness. 
Describing her last Bible reading service, her biog- 
rapher says : " There was something very impressive 
in Mrs. Prentiss's Bible readings. She seemed not 
unlike her gifted father in the power she possessed 
of captivating those who heard her. Her manner 
was perfectly natural, quiet, and even shy; it evi- 
dently cost her considerable effort to speak in the 
presence of so many listeners. She rarely looked 
round, or even looked up, but a sort of magnetic 



86 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

influence attracted every eye to her, and held all 
our hearts in breathless attention. Her style was 
entirely conversational. Her sentences were short, 
clear as crystal, full of happy turns, and always fresh 
and to the point. The tones of her voice were 
peculiar; I scarcely know how to describe them, 
they had such a fine, subtle, womanly quality; were 
touched — especially at her last reading — with such 
tenderness and depth of feeling. I only know that 
as we heard them it was almost as if we were list- 
ening to the voice of an angel." 

From this last reading, on the 8th of August, 
1878, she went home to die. Even while speaking 
to her spell-bound listeners, the shadow of death 
was upon her. Six days later, after suffering with 
uncomplaining patience, and unfaltering triumphing 
trust, the agony of a fierce, pitiless disease, "she 
drew one long breath, and all was over." 

The sublime victory of her faith can only be un- 
derstood by considering, not only what it achieved, 
but also what it overcame in herself. Next to 
one's natural selfishness, there is, perhaps, no greater 
hindrance to a life of faith than an inherited ten- 
dency to morbid feeling, especially when, as in this 
noble woman's case, it is associated with extreme 
moral sensibility. Their joint effect is to surround 



ELIZABETH PRENTISS. 87 

the mind with gloomy clouds without, and to torture 
it within with the sting of guilt, which it imagines 
so great as to be unpardonable. Besides this ten- 
dency, and this exquisite moral sensitiveness, Mrs. 
Prentiss had a delicate physical constitution, which 
subjected her to constantly recurring attacks of very 
painful sickness. She was, moreover, owing to her 
highly wrought nervous organization, governed by 
an irresistible impulse to an activity both of mind 
and body, which levied heavy taxes on her vitality. 
These were, indeed, formidable obstacles to a life 
of faith — so formidable that one can not view their 
conqueror without affectionate admiration. Coarser 
natures than hers may have to contend against 
tyrannical proclivities to vices of which her refined 
spirit never dreamed. But it is not exaggeration 
to say that it, probably, never, in any human life, 
required more strenuous resolution, and greater 
strength of will to live as she did, a sublimely 
beautiful life, to do a vast amount of varied Chris- 
tian work, and to soar, if not to the loftiest plane 
of spiritual thought and feeling, yet to an elevation 
far above that reached by the average Christian. 
Assuredly no candid mind can read the "Life and 
Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss " without exclaiming, 
"O woman, great was thy faith!" 



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IY. 
isfei? D0i?0:. 



" Come, child of misfortune ! eome hither ; 

I '11 weep with thee, tear for tear." 

—Moore. 

" But then, you see, she was a real princess." 



kHO was Sister Dora ? 

/? 

Sister Dora was the daughter of the Rev. 



M^ Mark Pattison, rector of Hauxwell, Yorkshire, 
England. Her name was Dorothy Wynd- 
low Pattison; but when she joined a Protestant 
sisterhood^ who called themselves " Good Samari- 
tans," because they devoted their lives to various 
works of mercy, she became known as Sister Dora. 
I will introduce Miss Pattison to the reader as she 
appeared in the year 1852, at which date she was 
twenty years of age. 

As described by her biographer,* she was then 



*" Sister Dora : a Biography," by Margaret Lonsdale. 
88 



SISTER DORA. 89 

a young lady of remarkable personal beauty. Her 
splendid figure was tall, slender, and uncommonly 
graceful. Her features were nearly perfect in their 
regularity. Her unusually high and wide forehead 
indicated the possession of superior mental quali- 
ties. Her mouth was small when its full, red lips 
were closed, but quite wide when she spoke or 
laughed, and in its corners there lay a half-concealed 
expression of fun. Her brilliant dark-brown eyes 
twinkled in " merry sympathy " with her lips. Her 
head was covered with " dark, tightly curling, brown 
hair." To these attractions she added a delicate 
and beautiful complexion, and she was, says Miss 
Lonsdale, " a fascinating creature to look upon." 
Her courteous manners and gentle speech harmon- 
ized with her beauty, and made her beloved by her 
friends and popular with all classes in the neighbor- 
hood of her home. By many she was often 
described as " a real princess," because of her sweet- 
ness and dignity. 

Such was Miss Dorothy Pattison at twenty. Her 
life up to this period had been spent in her father's 
rectory, under external conditions every way favor- 
able to the right formation of her character. Haux- 
well itself was a small, " intensely quiet " village of 
only three hundred inhabitants, situated on the 



90 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

border of extensive moorlands. But the rectory- 
was alive with the stir of twelve children, of whom 
Dorothy was the youngest but one. She was very 
delicate when a child, and because of this and of 
her sweet and even temper, she became "the pet 
and darling of her elder sisters." But though petted 
and kept from regular study because of her phys- 
ical debility, she was neither spoiled in disposition 
nor dwarfed in mind. She learned as by instinct, 
and through a habit of minute observation uncon- 
sciously formed. What she learned she remembered. 
If not always a correct, she was yet a precocious 
reasoner. Her will was strong as iron, but her 
unselfishness and her desire to please kept her from 
being willful and obstinate. Instead of meeting 
opposition to her wishes with sulkiness and ill- 
temper, she resorted to shrewd but good-natured 
devices to accomplish her purposes. These devices, 
though often, perhaps generally, successful, were 
sometimes blameworthy, and brought her into con- 
flict with the firm discipline of her judicious parents, 
to whose corrections she submitted, if not with abso- 
lute cheerfulness, yet with filial respect. 

When fourteen years old Dorothy suffered 
through several months from painful and dangerous 
illness. She bore the pain with singular fortitude; 



SISTER DORA. 91 

she endured the weariness of slow recovery cheer- 
fully, by constantly looking on the bright side of 
her case. Thus her sick-chamber was made a school 
of discipline, in which the best traits of her char- 
acter were strengthened. 

Dorothy's parents were much given to deeds of 
charity. They trained their children to habits of 
economy and self-denial, not for the purpose of sav- 
ing money, but that, by saving and self-denial, they 
might have more to give to the poor. Dorothy 
entered into their benevolent spirit quite readily, 
yet showed as yet no specially warm devotion to 
charitable work. 

After recovering from her long illness, she took 
to riding much on horseback, and became a good, 
even a daring, horsewoman. She learned to follow 
the hounds with her brothers, and to ride across the 
wild moorlands with a dashing speed, which fairly fas- 
cinated the Yorkshire lads who witnessed her feats 
of courage and independence. Thus, by much rid- 
ing, and by running, jumping, and other active out- 
door games, she at length became a strong, healthy, 
energetic woman. She was gifted with a flow of 
animal spirits which seemed unbounded, and with a 
power of perceiving and enjoying the humorous 
side of things. These gifts made her the " bright 



92 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

bonnie maiden " of the rectory, constantly bubbling 
over with harmless fun. She was, withal, thought- 
ful, given to meditation, to reflection, and to the 
silent gathering-lip of such facts and principles as 
were the topics of conversation around the rectory 
fireside, where culture and religion presided in 
delightful harmony, making the atmosphere of her 
home peaceful and every way enjoyable — an absolute 
contrast to that other Yorkshire rectory in which 
the gifted Bronte sisters passed their lives. 

The activity of Miss Dorothy's nature, and the 
monotony of life in a wild moorland region, begot 
a restlessness in her spirit which was extremely 
painful, and hard to be endured. This feeling was 
highly stimulated when reports of Florence Night- 
ingale's noble work in the Crimean hospitals reached 
her. " Let me go to her and be one of her nurses !" 
she said to her father. "No, my daughter," the 
good rector wisely replied, " you have had no train- 
ing for such work. You would be worse than use- 
less to Miss Nightingale. Besides, there is work 
enough for you here, if you would only think so." 

She submitted to her father's decision with filial 
respect ; albeit her craving for a more active life 
grew inwardly stronger. This inward tempest she 
so far concealed, however, as still to be the sunshine 



SISTER DORA. 93 

of her home, and to share with one of her sisters 
the duty of tenderly nursing her now invalid mother. 
It was a pleasing relief to her to visit her elder 
brother during his vacations, because from her con- 
versations with him she reaped much intellectual 
quickening. Daring one of those visits she had a 
singular dream, in which she saw her mother draw- 
ing aside the curtains of her bed, and heard her 
calling, " Dora, Dora, Dora !" This dream was 
repeated the following night. The next day a letter 
informed her of her mother's dangerous sickness. 
She hastened home and found her mother sick 
unto death! 

It is perhaps impossible to explain the philos- 
ophy of this remarkable dream. But the effect of 
her mother's death on Dora's life is easily compre- 
hended. Her mother's departure left her with 
slight domestic occupation, and thereby gave her 
restlessness such full play that her home-life, loving, 
elevating, and peaceful though it was, became abso- 
lutely distasteful to her. She had heard of the 
Sisterhood of Good Samaritans, and now asked her 
father's permission to join them. He strongly 
objected, though he did not absolutely forbid her 
doing so, since he very properly recognized her lib- 
erty to decide freely for herself, seeing that she was 



94 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN.. 

now nearly thirty years of age. She so far respected 
his wishes as not to join the Sisters at that time, but 
she did display her self-will to the extent of leaving 
the home of her childhood and becoming a school- 
mistress in the village of Woolston. In this she 
did " very wrong," as she confessed years after on 
her death-bed ; because instead of biding the open- 
ing of a providential path, she made a road for 
herself out of her proper place into a position which 
was much below her capabilities, her habits, and 
early associations. Instead of waiting for Providence 
to open a door for her entrance to the world 
beyond her home, she forced an opening with her 
own hands. 

She spent three years in the Woolston School, 
giving herself wholly to her chosen work. These 
years, though marked by privations, humiliations, 
and hardships, were far from being wasted. Her 
pupils loved her, and profited by her skillful teach- 
ing; the people of the place also recognized her as a 
lady — a a real princess," the working classes called 
her. One wealthy old gentleman and his wife were 
so charmed with her, that they begged her to give 
up her school and live with them. As they had no 
children, the old gentleman offered to make her his 
heir. This offer Dora declined. It was not ease, 



SISTER DORA. 95 

but active work, that she craved. And this craving 
grew so morbid that to her teaching by day she 
added nursing the sick by night. She was con- 
stantly haunted by an impression that she was not 
doing enough. Driven by this unnatural spur, she 
so overtaxed her vigorous physical powers, that 
she was at length stricken with pleurisy, and taken 
to the Home of the Good Samaritans at Eedcar, 
to be nursed. There she recovered her health, but 
did not rid herself of her morbid feelings, which 
were rather intensified than diminished by intercourse 
with the Sisterhood. Hence, in the Autumn of 
1864, very much to the regret of all her family, 
she became a member of the order of Good Sa- 
maritans. 

This Sisterhood, unlike those of the Papal 
Church, and of some of the High Church of Eng- 
land orders, took no vows, excepting a pledge of 
obedience to the clergyman whom they recognized 
as their pastor, and to the Sister whom he might 
appoint from their number to fill the office of 
"Sister in charge," or "Mother Superior." Their 
work was not contemplative, but secular and active, 
consisting chiefly in nursing the sick, both in hos- 
pitals and in private dwellings. As to the Sisters 
composing it, they appear to have been mostly 



96 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

uncultivated women,without much special intellectual 
training, and in every way inferior to Miss Pattison, 
who, . as we have seen, was a lady by birth, habit, 
associations, and manners. In every thing but the 
charitable nature of the work to be done, her 
entrance among them was a descent from her proper 
social position. Even her motive, at that partic- 
ular period of her life, did not much ennoble her 
act; for just then she was simply seeking to stifle 
the doubts she had latterly entertained concerning 
the truth of historical Christianity, by the mental 
preoccupation involved in toiling to excess in the 
sick-rooms of the poor. We shall see, by and by, 
how this motive was subsequently replaced by one 
which lifted her life up to the highest plane of 
moral grandeur and Christian nobleness. 

These well-meaning but somewhat misjudging 
Sisters subjected Dora to very severe discipline. 
She was a neophyte, and they thought she must 
be taught implicit obedience to their authority. 
Hence they gave her such servile and, to her, dis- 
tasteful tasks as making beds, sweeping and scrub- 
bing floors, scouring grates, and cooking in the 
kitchen of their " Home." 

Not very pleasant tasks, truly, for a highly 
bred lady, nor such as she had expected ; yet, when 



SISTER DORA. 91 

speaking of this training in after years, she said, 
"It was good for me." Assuredly it must have 
tended to humble her pride, and subdue her 
strongly-developed self-will. 

This initiatory training was succeeded by her 
introduction to hospital work, which was better 
suited to her taste and purposes. The year after 
she joined the Sisters, she was sent to a hospital 
containing fourteen beds, in the populous town of 
Walsall. Scarcely had she begun her appointed 
task there, before she caught the small-pox from 
an out-patient. She was very sick, and very poorly 
cared for by her "Sister" nurses. Nevertheless, 
she recovered, and resumed her duties. 

Walsall was a coal and iron town. Its people 
mostly wrought in the mines and at the furnaces. 
Ignorance and vice largely prevailed among them. 
In Mr. Wesley's day they were given to riot and 
cruelty, and seem to have retained their disposition 
to violence to modern times. By some means an 
impression was made that the "Good Samaritans" 
were papists, and they proposed to treat them as 
they had treated the Methodists a century before. 
A mob stoned their hospital; and one evening Sis- 
ter Dora, returning from a visit to an out-patient, 
was struck in the forehead by a stone from the 



98 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

hand of a lad, who shouted, "There goes one of 
the sisters of misery !" 

Not long after, this violent lad was severely 
injured in a coal-pit. On being taken to the hos- 
pital, he was at once recognized by Dora, and she 
nursed him with special care. One day during his 
convalescence, he sobbed, and said: 

"Sister, J threw that stone at you." 

"O," she replied, "did you think I did not know 
that? Why, I knew you the very first minute you 
came in at the door." 

"What!" he rejoined, "you knew me, and yet 
have been nursing me like this?" 

This was the first practical experience of good 
returned for evil that young man had ever received, 
and it filled him with wonder, and with admiration 
of Sister Dora. 

The superiority of Sister Dora to the other 
members of the Sisterhood was soon obvious to all 
who had the opportunity of seeing them. When 
Sir James Simpson, of Edinburgh, visited their 
Home in search of a suitable nurse, to take care 
of a partially insane old lady, after seeing all the 
others, he was introduced to Dora. She was busy, 
with her sleeves tucked up, making a pudding. But 
his experienced eye, despite her employment, saw 



SISTER DORA. 99 

in her a character that was lacking in all her com- 
panions, and he promptly said : " Send me that 
sister. She is the one for my case." 

The event' proved that Sir James was not mis- 
taken. Dora managed the half-mad old lady with 
a degree of skill and tact that soothed her violent 
moods, and she actually won her affections. In 
speaking of this service subsequently, Sister Dora 
said: "I had an uncommonly unpleasant time with 
that mad old lady." 

The cold-hearted tyranny of the probably jealous 
Sisterhood was shown when Sister Dora, in obedi- 
ence to their order, was preparing to go to Devon- 
shire, to nurse a private patient. Just then a letter 
informed her that her father was dangerously sick, 
and desired to see her. She begged permission to 
visit him. But her stern Superior replied, " No ; 
you must go at once to Devonshire !" 

With an aching heart Sister Dora unwisely sac- 
rificed her filial obligations on the altar of obedience 
to the Sisterhood. She had scarcely reached her 
patient's home before she was informed that her 
father was dead. Then the Sisterhood, ashamed, 
probably, of their tyranny, or else afraid of public 
censure, wrote her: " You may attend your father's 
funeral, if you please." 



100 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

With pardonable bitterness, Dora replied: 
" When my father was alive, you would not permit 
me to go to him. Now he is dead, I no longer 
care to go." 

Sister Dora ought not to have yielded to the 
cold-hearted tyranny of those so-called Good Sa- 
maritans, whose zeal for their order had evidently 
chilled their finer affections. But in this they only 
illustrated the tendency of all those organizations, 
whether male or female, Catholic or Protestant, 
which require implicit submission to official author- 
ity. No human being has a right to make such a 
surrender of personal freedom to the will of others. 
The effect of this tyranny on Sister Dora was to 
weaken her respect for the Sisterhood; and but for 
the fixedness of her desire to lighten the burdens 
of the afflicted, she would probably have quitted 
them at once. Nevertheless, seeing that through 
them she could best find opportunities to gratify 
her desire, she, though sore at heart, retained her 
connection with them a little longer. 

She was sorely tempted, too, about this time, to 
quit the sisters, by an eligible offer of marriage. 
Her affection for her suitor, though sufficiently deep 
to produce a severe conflict in her mind with her 
cherished purpose to devote her life to works of 






SISTER DORA. 101 

mercy, was yet not strong enough to overcome it. 
Marriage and maternity had unusually strong attrac- 
tions for her affectionate nature, and when reviewing 
her life, near its close, she said, " If I had to begin 
life over again I would marry." But the candidate 
for her hand failed to awaken in her a love strong 
enough to overcome the passion for a life devoted 
to active usefulness among the suffering. Had he 
sought her earlier, while her nursing was as yet only 
a means of calming somewhat the restlessness of her 
mind caused by her nascent skepticism, it is likely 
that she would have become his wife. But by this 
time her doubts had found their solution in a per- 
sonal love for Christ. Hence, her motive in nursing 
was no longer simply a desire to escape unrest, but 
a noble purpose to serve suffering humanity for the 
sake of Him who died for her and for the whole 
world. And but for the counsels of judicious friends, 
she would most likely at this time have joined one 
of those High Church Sisterhoods which are bound 
by vows to lead a single life. As it was, her conflict 
ended in the rejection of this suitor and her contin- 
uance, with renewed zeal, in the work she had 
chosen, especially in her hospital work at Walsall. 
The Walsall mines and iron works, in which 
accidents to their workers were common occurrences, 



102 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

created a constant demand for surgical skill in the 
hospital. Sister Dora perceived this at once, and 
gave the full power of her penetrative mind to such 
close observation of the surgical work doue by its 
medical attendants as to acquire a quick and " keen 
discernment of the character of wounds and of the 
exact position of fractures." Her courage, self- 
possession, and tactual skill soon so won the confidence 
and admiration of the old doctor of the hospital 
that he gladly gave her all the instruction in his 
power. The result was that she became a skillful 
surgeon as well as a nurse, whose tenderness, patience, 
activity, endurance, and power to inspire the suffer- 
ing with hopeful courage, could not be excelled. 
For a time she did "her work so unobtrusively as 
not to attract much attention outside of the hospital 
and of the homes of the out-door patients. But 
having contracted a serious sickness in 1866 by her 
utter and unpardonable disregard of her own health, 
the general public began to hear of her good deeds 
through the reports of those to whom she had ren- 
dered valuable services. Then many asked, " Who 
is this Sister Dora of whom we hear so much ?" 
The replies they got led not a few to seek her 
acquaintance. 

Among these was a clergyman of the National 



SISTER DORA. 103 

Church, named Kichard Twigg, a truly evangelical 
man, whose instructions and friendship proved un- 
speakably valuable to her. Indeed, she ascribed her 
recovery mainly to the prayers of this devout min- 
ister, and of his large congregation, whom he had 
interested in her behalf. 

The demands of the growing population of Wal- 
sall on the hospital led to the erection of a larger 
structure in a more healthful situation, over which 
Sister Dora was duly installed in 1868. Just then 
the small-pox became epidemic in the town. Noth- 
ing daunted by the disgusting and infectious char- 
acter of this loathsome disease, she labored day and 
night, in and out of the hospital, for several months. 
Her excessive labors, her neglect of her own needs 
of sleep and food, were truly marvelous during the 
prevalence of this epidemic, and excited general 
admiration. 

One night she was sent for by a poor man who 
was dying of the worst type of this disease. She 
found him forsaken by all his relations. Only a 
neighbor was left to watch him. Finding only a 
small piece of candle in the house, she gave this 
woman money to procure more candles, promising 
to stay with the sufferer until her return. But the 
woman spent the money for drink, and did not 



104 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

reappear with the needed candles. Sister Dora con- 
tinued by the poor creature's bedside. Presently 
he raised himself up in his bed as far as his depart- 
ing strength permitted and said : " Sister, kiss me 
before I die !" It was a loathsome task, but Dora, 
thinking more of the poor man's feelings than of 
herself, put her arms around him and kissed him ! 
The next moment the candle went out. " Do n't 
leave me, Sister, while I live," groaned the dying 
man. It was then past midnight, but she remained 
beside him until he died. Even then she kept 
dreary watch in the darkness, fearing that, though 
silent and cold, the poor creature might still be 
alive. When the day dawned she groped her way 
to the door and called in the neighbors. Surely 
she was a ministering angel to that deserted man ! 
The tenderness of Dora's nature moved her to 
closely study " what is called conservative surgery.' 
The doctors of the hospital, when they saw a bruised 
and mangled limb, were but too apt to decide, without 
much hesitation, on its amputation. Dora, knowing 
that the loss of limb by a miner or iron-founder 
meant future poverty both for the man and his fam- 
ily, always urged the surgeons to save the limb if 
at all possible. Here is a typical case of her action 
in this direction : A fine, healthy young man was 



SISTER DORA. 105 

brought to the hospital one night with an arm 
badly crushed by a machine. The doctor said, 
peremptorily : 

" Nothing can save that arm ! It must be cut 
off at once." 

The man groaned deeply. Sister Dora's sympa- 
thies were moved. She scanned the mangled limb 
with a critical eye, and thought it could be saved. 
The young man, as if reading her thoughts, cried 
piteously : 

" O, Sister ! save my arm for me ; it 's my 
right arm. 

Turning to the surgeon, Dora said, " I believe 
I can save this arm if you will let me try." 

"Are you mad ?" retorted the doctor, angrily. 
"I tell you it y s an impossibility. Mortification will 
soon set in. Nothing but amputation can save 
his life." 

Dora, turning to the sufferer, asked : "Are you 
willing I should try to save your arm, my man ?" 

The man joyfully consented to accept the risk. 
The doctor was now in as much passion as he could 
be with this wonderful woman, whom he greatly 
admired, and walked away, saying : " Well, mind, 
it 's your arm ! If you choose to have the young 
man's death on your conscience, I shall not interfere. 



106 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

I wash my hands of him. Do n't think I am going 
to help you." 

Dora had often disagreed with the doctor, and 
results had usually justified her opinion. In this 
case she used her utmost skill during the ensuing 
three weeks. Then she said to the doctor, "Come 
and see my work!" 

Scarcely willing to be proved wrong by a woman 
who was under his personal direction, he somewhat 
sullenly complied. Dora removed the bandages, 
and showed him the arm, no longer mangled, but 
straight and healthy. Astonished at this unex- 
pected sight, he exclaimed : " Why, you have saved 
it! It will be useful to him for many a long year." 
Then calling in the rest of his medical staff, he 
proudly bade them look at the work of his pupil, 
and learn from it "what might be done." 

Dora was gratified. She loved approbation, 
especially when she knew it to be deserved. More 
precious, however, to her was the young man's 
gratitude, and the influence this and other feats of 
nursing skill gave her, not only with her medical 
superior, but also with the trustees of the hospital. 
By their permission, she now undertook to take 
lady pupils, to train in the hospital as surgical 
nurses. This work did not, probably, add as much 



SISTER DORA. 107 

to her burdens as to her responsibilities, because 
the lady pupils, while under her instruction, by 
acting as nurses and assistants, relieved her of other 
portions of her too heavy duties. 

Sister Dora had large intellectual capacities 
which, despite her constant preoccupation, craved 
sympathy with some kindred spirit. Her patients 
mostly belonged to the uncultivated classes; her 
lady pupils were not sufficiently long with her — 
were not, perhaps, of an intellectual standard high 
enough to satisfy her craving; her pastor, though 
very helpful to the religious side of her life, could 
not, with the many claims upon his time, minister 
to her mental wants; and she was too fully occu- 
pied to find what she needed in the best social 
circles of Walsall. This sense of intellectual iso- 
lation prepared her to fall into a snare, which came 
very near working a complete, perhaps an unhappy, 
change in her career. This snare was no other 
than a new suitor for her hand. A gentleman in- 
tellectually her superior, fitted in all but one feature 
of his character to meet the demands of both her 
mind and heart, became strongly attached to her, 
and offered to make her his wife. Dora recipro- 
cated his affection with all the ardor of her sympa- 
thetic nature. Her love became a passion. She 



108 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

engaged herself to him, and was on the point of 
exchanging her chosen vocation for the more at- 
tractive duties of married life. 

This was very natural, and not in itself im- 
proper. Nay, it was in many ways desirable. But 
the friend whose counsels had kept her from giving 
her hand to a previous suitor, ventured to protest 
against her present passion. "Your affianced," he 
pleaded, "is a pronounced skeptic. You are bound 
to your God by the ties of faith and love. Can 
you retain your faith if you become the wife of an 
infidel? If you can, will not your differences on 
this most momentous of all subjects, breed discord 
between you? 

Dora pondered these weighty questions until, 
convinced that her love to Christ was infinitely 
more important, both to her personal happiness 
and to her influence over others, than her pas- 
sionate love for this cultivated infidel, she with- 
drew from her engagement. This was a great, a 
really noble sacrifice. It cost her a mental strug- 
gle so intensely agonizing that it made her the 
prey of a fit of sickness which lasted a month, and 
brought her to the very door of death. At least, 
the good old hospital doctor thought she was near 
her end when he left the institution one day, saying, 



SISTER DORA. 109 

with tears, "If Sister Dora dies, I'll never enter 
these doors again !" 

But Sister Dora did not die. Her strong will, 
with skillful treatment, and the blessing of God, 
restored her to health, and to the work she loved. 

Were it not authentically vouched, the story of 
Sister Dora's work, both in and out of the hospital, 
would be deemed incredible. Her capacity of 
working incessantly all day, and of watching four 
or five nights in succession, was such as few, either 
men or women, possess. Her ability as a tender 
nurse, her surgical skill in reducing a fracture, 
tying an artery, and dressing a wound, is rarely 
excelled, even by professional surgeons. Her ver- 
satility, by which she could turn from managing 
the sick wards to directing the catering depart- 
ments of the establishment, was remarkable; her 
power to command the respect of the rude, often 
vile, men who were constantly placed under her 
care, was such as few men or women possess; and 
the magnetism by which she inspired her patients 
with fortitude under terrible surgical operations, 
or when their wounds, caused by burning and scald- 
ing, were dressed, and with cheerfulness under the 
weariness of long-continued weakness and pain, was 
also wonderful. But besides all these qualities, and 



110 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

the burden of her onerous hospital duties, she en- 
gaged after 1873 in missionary work. She had 
previously regarded her nursing as a ministration 
to Christ's sick and suffering ones, and had con- 
stantly prayed for his blessing on her nursing. 
But when, in 1873, a special meeting was held in 
Walsall for the spiritual welfare of the people, she 
went out among them, and persuaded many to 
attend the services. She also attended prayer-meet- 
ings established by her pastor, the liberal-minded 
Mr. Twigg; and after going to Birmingham, for 
the purpose of studying the methods of Moody and 
Sankey, she taught her hospital patients to sing 
the Sankey hymns; and at the close of the Sunday 
afternoon hospital services, conducted by a clergy- 
man, she addressed them in her own peculiar and 
effective manner. "I try to put myself," she said, 
" in the place of these poor men, to see with their 
eyes, and to feel their wants and difficulties as if 
they were my own, and then God puts into my 
heart the words which will reach their hearts." Is 
it surprising that by this simple process, and by her 
habits of constant Bible study, she became wise to 
win souls? She always carried a small Bible in her 
pocket, and when found reading it one day by one 
of her lady pupils, "the expression on her face," 



SISTER DORA. Ill 

said this eye-witness, "was indescribable; it was 
like nothing I had ever seen on a human face be- 
fore — unearthly is the word I must use for it." 
Evidently Sister Dora had learned to see the face 
and heart of her Lord in his Word. To her, read- 
ing the Bible was communing with God. 

In 1874 Sister Dora dissolved her connection 
with the "Good Samaritans," saying, when asked 
her reason for this act, "I am a woman, and not 
a piece of furniture!" The Sisterhood then 
wrote the committee that they would no longer be 
responsible for the nursing at the Walsall hospital. 
But the committee, esteeming Sister Dora's services 
as of higher value to them than those of the whole 
Sisterhood, requested her to assume its entire charge, 
to which she gladly assented, seeing that it was only 
formally accepting a responsibility which she had 
practically borne for several years. 

Perhaps Dora's crowning act of self-denial was 
her offer, in 1875, to take charge of the Epidemic 
Hospital, which had been built after the visitation 
of small-pox suffered by the Walsall people in 1868. 
Dora knew that the poor would not send their sick 
to such a hospital if conducted by ordinary nurses. 
She knew, too, as did the authorities of the city, 
that if she took it in charge they would willingly 



112 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

trust their friends to her care. It was a daring, a 
revolting, a perilous task to isolate herself from the 
community, and to shut herself up with small-pox 
patients, for an indefinite time. It was too much to 
ask her to do it, for was it not going into the jaws 
of death ? But, seeing that she might thereby pre- 
vent the town from being ravaged by this disgust- 
ing and deadly pestilence, and so save many lives, 
she did not wait to be asked; but, after finding 
that she could safely trust her own hospital to the care 
of three lady pupils, she heroically volunteered to 
undertake it. Her offer was gladly accepted. The 
public breathed more freely, as men and women 
went about saying to one another, " Sister Dora 
is going to the Epidemic Hospital !" O, Christ- 
like Sister Dora ! 

It is a pity that this Christly act was marred by 
Dora's jealousy lest, during her absence from her 
post, some one of her lady pupils should display 
qualities that might rival her own. To prevent 
this, instead of placing one of them in charge, she 
left, simply bidding them divide its duties among 
themselves. The result, as she must have antici- 
pated, was disagreement and inefficiency. The pride 
she took in her acknowledged superiority as a nurse 
was the root of her jealousy. It was a spot on the 



SISTER DORA. 113 

otherwise grand decision of Dora's love for human- 
ity and Christ, which led her to immure herself 
within the walls of the Epidemic Hospital. Alas, 
poor human nature ! 

When Dora stood on the steps of the Epidemic 
Hospital, a great dread of what she was to encounter 
there filled her heart. Shivering with a strange 
spasm of terror, she exclaimed : 

"O, take me back! I can not endure this 
dreadful place! I had no idea what it would be 
like when I said I would come here." 

Her companion, the physician of the hospital, 
only replied, " Come in !" She followed him. The 
internal arrangements of the building at once 
arrested her attention. Her momentary fear van- 
ished, and she went quietly to her work. 

Dora spent six months in that dreadful lazar- 
house, among the victims of the repulsive epidemic, 
with no one to assist her except an old porter and 
some poor women employed to do the washing of 
the patients. The toil she endured, the scenes she 
witnessed, the courage she displayed, the skill with 
which she fought the disease, the cheerfulness with 
which she encouraged the sufferers, and the won- 
derful fortitude which kept her at her post, can 

neither be described nor even imagined. Never- 

10 



114 SOME REMARKABLE W03IEN. 

theless, sustained by her indomitable will, and by 
the grace of the Lord Jesus, she lived to see the 
last small-pox patient pass out from her care, to see 
the gates of the building closed, and to resume her 
old place in the regular hospital. 

The limits of this sketch forbid further details 
of the work of this really wonderful woman. It 
must, therefore, suffice to add that she continued 
her career as nurse and Christian worker, chiefly at 
Walsall, with unabated zeal and self-devotion, win- 
ning, as usual, the affections of even her rudest and 
vilest patients, until, in 1877, she began to feel her 
masculine strength slightly declining. " What can 
be the cause ?" she asked herself. Unable to answer 
this question, she consulted Mr. Crompton, a physi- 
cian who was her personal friend. The result of his 
examination was startling. It brought her face to 
face with death; for, as he assured her, she had a 
cancer which, said he, " must ultimately destroy 
your life !" 

Mr. Crompton proposed a surgical operation. 
" It may prolong your life somewhat," he said. But 
Dora hesitated. She knew the uncertainty of the 
treatment proposed. Finally she said: 

" No, I will allow the disease to take its natural 
course. But promise me to keep my condition a 



SISTER DORA. 115 

secret. If my friends find it out, they will not per- 
mit me to keep on working, as I wish to do to 
the last." 

Dr. Crompton gave the required promise, and 
Dora returned to her duties, knowing that her 
death-sentence was written on her person. "She 
then prayerfully reviewed her past life, and saw in 
it, as she thought, so much work left undone, so 
many wasted opportunities, so much time unre- 
deemed, that she resolved to give all the financial 
resources she had inherited from her father, with 
the whole energy of her soul and body, to make the 
very utmost of every moment still left her. Besides 
this motive for keeping her disease a secret, she 
shrunk from being an object of pity. She, who 
could pity others and give them her overflowing 
sympathy, could not endure to be herself pitied. 
Perhaps there was a little pride in this shrinking 
from pity and sympathy, or it may be she was con- 
tent with the sympathy of Him in whose steps she 
was so treading, that common opinion was voiced 
by one of her friends, who said, after her death, 
" Sister Dora was as like the Lord Jesus as any 
human creature could be." 

Dora visited the Isle of Man in the Summer of 
1878, to see some of her nieces. She then went to 



116 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

Paris to the Exhibition, and afterwards to London, 
at both of which places she gave close attention to 
medical and surgical questions. In appearance she 
was still a beautiful, healthful lady ; in reality she 
was slowly approaching the crisis of her disease. In 
October she wrote to a clerical friend : " The decree 
has gone forth, i Sister, put thy house in order, for 
thou shalt die, and not live.' There is only Mount 
Calvary to climb, by the ladder of sickness. I have 
not had two hours' sleep for four days and nights; 
but in the midst of the fiery furnace there was a 
form like unto the Son of God." 

Then came eleven weeks of exquisite suffering, 
during which she was lovingly nursed by her Wal- 
sall friends, and visited by many leading citizens 
of the place. On the 24th of December, replying 
to a friend who had remarked, "Our blessed Lord 
is standing at the gates of heaven to open them for 
you," she said : " I see him there ; the gates are 
opened wide." 

A little later her pain subsided, and Sister Dora's 
life ebbed quietly away, and her escaped spirit 
swelled the glorified throng, and was forever with 
her Lord. 

Dora's death filled all Walsall with genuine 
grief. The whole city was deeply moved, and 



SISTER DORA. 117 

almost its entire population, from its civic officers 
to its poor, its halt, and its maimed, was present at 
her burial. Never did any city pay greater honor 
to one of its dead than Walsall to the remains of 
Sister Dora. 

There was much in Sister Dora's life that can 
not be, perhaps ought not to be, imitated by any 
other woman. Her idiosyncrasies were peculiarly 
her own. What woman ever combined so much 
masculine physical strength with so much feminine 
grace and beauty ? or so much manly force of 
character with so much womanly delicacy? or so 
much broad, not to say coarse, humor with so much 
purity of feeling and language? or so much self- 
forgetfulness in the presence of the many inevitable 
indelicacies of hospital practice with so much per- 
fect modesty? It is not her idiosyncrasies, there- 
fore, that the Christian woman is to aspire to imitate, 
but only her spirit of self-sacrifice. Dora gave all 
she had to the service of Christ and humanity. My 
lady reader can give all she has to the same high 
service. Dora spent herself in a way suited to her 
peculiar endowments. The lady reader can spend 
her life in a way suited to her own gifts. The voice 
of duty does not call any lady, young or old, to 
tread paths which nature has unfitted her to walk 



118 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

in, but only to consecrate whatever gifts she has to 
the Master's service. When our dear Lord gave 
judgment concerning Mary's devotion, he did not 
say, She hath done what Deborah or Elizabeth or 
Salome did, but, " She hath done what she could." 
And this is duty's call to every daughter of the 
Church — so to act that, at her death, the Eternal 
Judge may say of her, " She hath done what 
she could." 



ip I'- 
ll 




l!!'':t:!![i:illllllllllllll!i::i!||illlllll 

Iilniilillllllllilllillllllllllllllllilllillllllllllll 



qf 



Q<znr)fe. 



7 ^^9 



For not uninterested the dear maid 
I 've viewed; her soul affectionate yet wise; 
Her polished wit as mild as lambent glories 
That play around a sainted infant's head." 



—Coleridge. 




[£AKY ANNE LAMB is ranked among famous 
women, not because of her contributions to 
literature, though they were by no means des- 
picable, as will be shown, but because of her 
sisterly devotion to her brother Charles, whose genial 
and witty essays gave him, as the reader knows, a 
high place among the literary celebrities of his 
times. The story of the love of this brother and 
sister probably has no parallel in the lives of men 
and women. The tragic circumstances which called 
it into activity invest it with rare interest, and 

cause its marvelous beauty to stand out so conspic- 

119 



120 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

uously as to compel the admiration of every class 
of readers. In both it was a love of sacrifice, and 
it may be difficult to determine which made the 
greater sacrifice for the other's sake. Without 
attempting to solve this problem, one may certainly 
affirm that Mary was a true sister in the original 
sense of that familiar word, which, as etymologists 
teach, signifies, u she who pleases or consoles." The 
love of Antigone for her brothers, as presented by 
Sophocles in his famous tragedy, was more than 
equaled in depth and beauty by the love of Mary 
Lamb for her wonderfully affectionate brother. 

Miss Lamb was born in London on the 3d of 
December, 1764. She was the third of a family 
of seven children born to her father, who was a 
barrister's clerk. Of these, four died in early child- 
hood, leaving John, the eldest, Mary, and Charles, 
the youngest of the seven, to grow to maturity. 

Mary was a shy, sensitive, nervous, affectionate 
child, in whom a close observer might have dis- 
cerned symptoms of a brain likely to be disordered 
by a tendency to insanity, inherited from her father's 
ancestors. It was her misfortune that her mother, 
though kind, and even affectionate, did not, proba- 
bly could not, comprehend her peculiar need of 
being loved with an affection as demonstrative as 



MARY LAMB. 121 

her own. Hence, instead of responding to the child's 
fond words and caresses with sympathetic warmth, 
she repelled her, if not with sharp words, yet with 
a coldness which chilled her heart. 

Mary's home, which, though humble, was above 
want, was still more unfitted to her needs because 
of a maiden aunt who dwelt in it, and whose odd 
ways, " witch-like mutterings and mumblings/' and 
uncanny glances, made her an object of dread to 
the shrinking maiden, as she was also to her brother 
Charles. Her school education was limited to instruc- 
tion in reading, writing, and " ciphering," by " a gen- 
tle usher" named Starkey. The library of Mr. Salt, 
her father's employer, in which she was suffered " to 
browse " at will, doubtless contributed to the unfold- 
ing of her mind, as it did also, by the unsuitable 
books it contained, to the birth of fancies and feel- 
ings which nourished the seeds of insanity sown by 
nature in her susceptible spirit. Occasional visits 
to her maternal grandmother and other relatives, 
living in the country, also had their influence, both 
good and ill, in forming her character. 

"When Mary was full ten years old, her brother 

Charles was born. He was "a weakly but very 

pretty babe," and his coming not only made Mary's 

life less lonely, but, as she was old enough to act 

11 



122 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

the part of a nurse, her care of him, by diverting 
her mind from its uncanny fancies, had a health-giving 
effect upon her young soul. His nature, as he grew 
up, proved to be very like her own. His mind 
responded to her intelligence, and his heart recip- 
rocated her strong affection. They were inseparable 
companions until, in 1782, when he was seven years 
old, and a handsome boy with curling, black hair, 
brown complexion, and glittering eyes, she had to 
lose his daily companionship because of his admis- 
sion to Christ's Hospital. But, though he was a 
" Blue-coat boy," his home was near at hand, and his 
association with his sister, though interrupted, was 
by no means broken up. 

Seven years in Christ's Hospital had to suffice 
for Charles Lamb's school education. The help- 
lessness and infirmities of old age had overtaken 
their parents, and made it necessary for him and 
Mary to undertake, at least in part, the support of 
their now mentally incompetent father, and their 
physically broken down mother. Mary had already 
begun her part, by " taking in millinery work/' which 
she continued to do for eleven years, or until she was 
thirty-two years old. Charles now put his shoul- 
der beneath the family burden, by accepting a 
clerk's desk, procured for him by his elder brother, 



MARY LAMB. 123 

the selfish John, in the South Sea House. Then, 
in the happy fellowship of love and self-sacrificing 
toil, this loving brother and sister traveled uncom- 
plainingly along the humble path in which their 
lots were cast. 

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, though two years 
older than Lamb, had become acquainted with him 
at Christ's Hospital, where Lamb had almost wor- 
shiped the rising genius of the future philosopher. 
After entering the South Sea House, the two old 
school-mates often met at a tavern known as the 
"Salutation and Cat." There their acquaintance- 
ship ripened into friendship, and Lamb introduced 
Coleridge to his own modest home, and to his sis- 
ter. In the literary chitchat with which they enliv- 
ened the evening hours, Coleridge learned to perceive 
the fine qualities of Mary's mind and heart, and 
became the firm friend of both. 

But the shadow of a lifelong affliction fell across 
the path of this unfortunate, devoted brother and 
sister in the year 1795. Crossed in an affection he 
had cherished for a young lady, and oppressed with 
the cares of family life forced prematurely upon 
him, poor Lamb's reason reeled, and for six weeks 
he became an inmate of an insane asylum. He had 
not been long restored before his brother John, 



124 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

who, when well, had not offered to assist them, 
though abundantly able, having met with an acci- 
dent, sought the nursing he required in the modest 
home of Charles and his sister. The nursing was 
cheerfully given, but it cost them a fearful price. 
Mary, then thirty-two years old, worn down with 
overmuch care, excessive needlework, and incessant 
nursing of her crippled mother, to which the watch- 
ing of her elder brother was superadded, fell into a 
state of " extreme nervous misery." Symptoms of 
the family madness appearing one morning, Charles, 
on his way to his office, requested a physician to call 
and prescribe for Mary. The doctor was, unfortu- 
nately, out. Mary's symptoms grew worse in the 
afternoon, when she was suddenly seized with 
frenzy. Grasping a knife, she rushed upon her 
sewing-girl with murderous intent. The girl fled 
before her. Mary pursued her. Her mother hastily 
interposed, and the blow aimed at the affrighted girl 
fell upon the mother and killed her instantly ! 
Charles entered the room only in time to snatch the 
knife from the hand of his maniac sister. She was 
utterly unconscious of what she had done, and 
Charles, with a sorrow-stricken, foreboding heart, 
placed her within the walls of an asylum for the 
insane. 



MARY LAMB. 125 

This double tragedy almost unnerved the sensi- 
tive Charles. But his friend Coleridge cheered him 
with letters full of beauty, wisdom, and religious 
consolations. He seems also to have sought strength 
and healing in prayer. Unlike his brother, who 
refused to act a brother's part, and even censured 
him for refusing to let their sister be sent by the 
civic authorities to a public hospital for life, Charles 
rose nobly to the demands of the occasion. Though 
his entire income — he was by this time a clerk in 
the India House — was but nine hundred dollars per 
annum, and it would require one-third of that sum 
to pay Mary's expenses in the asylum, yet he right 
manfully and nobly determined to give up his long- 
cherished hope of marrying "the fair-haired maid" 
whom he loved, and to take upon himself the sup- 
port of his infirm father and insane sister. 

This determination involved a. measure of self- 
sacrifice few brothers would be willing to make. 
But Charles knew that Mary was worthy of it. He 
loved her, not only because she was his sister, but 
also because he believed her to be " uniformly great 
and amiable. Of all the people I ever saw in the 
world," he said, with proud affection, " my poor 
sister was most and thoroughly devoid of the least 
tincture of selfishness." 



126 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

But what of Mary after her terrible deed ? She 
was not long in the asylum before she was restored, 
says Charles, " to her senses, and to a dreadful sense 
and recollection of what had passed," which was 
awful to her mind, but tempered with religious 
resignation. " Even then she was happily able to 
discriminate between a deed committed in a transient 
fit of frenzy, and the terrible guilt of a mother's 
murder. . . . She had a most affectionate and 
tender concern for what had happened." She grieved, 
but there was no sting of guilt in her grief, and she 
found comfort in the thought that she had always 
loved her mother with a deep and tender affection, 
which had been "but half requited," and that it 
was "the long years of daily and nightly devotion 
to her" which had developed the madness that 
led to the sad catastrophe. No wonder, therefore, 
that the recollection of her mother's death awakened 
no accusing voice in her conscience, no fear as to her 
accountability for the unintentional deed. Very 
touchingly she wrote to Charles on this point, say- 
ing : " I have no bad, terrifying dreams. At midnight, 
when I happen to awake, . . . with the noise 
of the poor mad people around me, I have no fear. 
The spirit of my mother seems to descend and 
smile upon me and bid me live to enjoy the life and 



MARY LAMB. 127 

reason which the Almighty has given me," Had 
she been an unloving, disobedient daughter, could 
such thoughts have arisen to comfort her? Had 
there been any unfilial acts in her past, would they 
not have reappeared in her memory and dreams as 
accusing specters? And what was the mother's 
smile she saw in her nightly visions but a bright 
effulgence from that complete and loving observance 
of a daughter's obligations which she had rendered 
unceasingly up to the hour of her insanity? 

It is illustrative of Mary's charming disposition 
that she won, not the respect and indulgence merely, 
but the love of the keepers of the asylum. It was 
thought prudent to detain her within its walls some 
time after her reason was restored, and, says Charles, 
"she set herself with characteristic sweetness to 
make the best of life in a private lunatic asylum." 
Of her keepers he adds, " They love her and she 
loves them, and makes herself very useful to them." 

In the Spring of 1797 Mary was thought to be 
sufficiently restored to quit the asylum. Charles, 
unwilling to burden her with the care of their help- 
less father, provided her with a lodging, where he 
spent many of his evenings enjoying her intelligent 
companionship, and inwardly rejoicing over his hope 
that she would not be insane again. Vain hope ! 



128 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

Only a few months later she was again in the asy- 
lum. Poor Charles was in the depths of disappoint- 
ment and dejection, dreading lest it was his sister's 
doom to live " perpetually on the brink of madness." 

In 1799 the death of Lamb's father, and the 
apparent recovery of Mary, made it practicable for 
him to take her home. "Mary/- he wrote, "was 
never in better health and spirits than now." Shortly 
after this she made her first attempt at verse-making, 
by producing a playful little epigram entitled 
"Helen," which Charles sent to Coleridge in great 
glee, claiming it to be " very elegant and very orig- 
inal." He subsequently published it in the first col- 
lected edition of his works. 

About this period of her life Mary began to go 
into society with her brother, and after setting up 
their household gods at No. 16 Mitre Court, to 
gather around their hospitable supper-table " an 
ever-lengthened succession of friends, cronies, and 
acquaintances," which included many brilliant con- 
versationists and literary celebrities. Mary, during 
her periods of sanity, bore herself, both in these 
home-gatherings and in the literary parties at which 
she and her brother were guests, with such habitual 
serenity of demeanor that, says Talfourd, " little 
could any one observing Miss Lamb guess the calamity 



MARY LAMB. 129 

which frightfully checkered her life." De Quincey 
called her " that Madonna-like lady." In person 
she was under the middle-size. Her very placid 
features were well formed ; her changeful eyes were 
described by Procter as " gray and intelligent," and 
by Miss Cowden Clarke as " brown, soft, and pene- 
trating." Miss Clarke also says that " her smile 
was winning in the extreme." Her manners were 
quiet and easy. Her voice was soft and persuasive, 
with an emotional stress in breathing which gave a 
charm to her reading of poetry, and a captivating 
earnestness. She talked sparingly, but her speech 
was "quaint and pleasant." These external char- 
acteristics were the visible expressions of a mind 
richly endowed with clear and quick perceptions, 
sound judgment, strong reasoning powers, and ex- 
ceeding sweetness of disposition. Her culture had 
been derived, not from scholastic training, but from 
much and varied reading. She was not, therefore, 
an unnoticed cipher when in the society of her 
brother's literary associates, but an agreeable com- 
panion, who contributed, by her sensible apprecia- 
tion of their wit and wisdom, to their entertainment. 
Hazlitt used to say of her, " I never met with a 
woman who could reason, and I have met with only 
one thoroughly reasonable, and that was Mary 



130 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

Lamb ;" a remark, by the way, as unfair, at least 
to many women, as " it was commendatory of 
Mary Lamb." 

"When Mary's constantly recurring fits of mad- 
ness were coming on, her speech, though rambling 
and fantastic, was, as Mrs. Gilchrist informs us, 
sometimes brilliant, beautiful, and courtly, " as if 
the finest elements of her mind had been shaken 
into fantastic combinations, like those of a ka- 
leidoscope." 

Her attacks were usually brought on by excite- 
ment of any kind, or by excessive fatigue. First 
sleeplessness, then restlessness, sometimes stupor, 
were their premonitory symptoms. Fully aware of 
her liability to them, she was accustomed, when 
starting on a holiday trip, which necessarily involved 
fatigue, to pack a strait-waistcoat with her own 
hands. When warned by her feelings that her 
mind was about to lose control of itself, she would 
gently and sadly intimate the fact to her brother. 
Reluctant to give publicity to his great affliction, 
poor Lamb would ask leave of absence from his 
office, as if for a day's excursion. Then, taking 
Mary's hand, he would walk with her to the asy- 
lum. Mr. Charles Lloyd, one of their intimate 
friends, met them one day thus slowly walking 



MARY LAMB. 131 

together along a footpath in Hoxton Fields, both 
weeping bitterly. On joining them they told him 
that they were on their way to the asylum, to which 
she so often resorted for treatment. What a sad, 
yet beautiful spectacle ! Sad, because of the suffer- 
ing; beautiful, because of the depth and tenderness 
of the affection it displayed. 

Lamb's tender anxiety led him to be always 
watching his sister. Even when in his most con- 
vivial moods, if he saw a languid look in her sweet 
face, he would turn from his companions to her, and 
ask, "Mary, does your head ache? Do you feel 
unwell?" If it chanced that the conversation 
turned to exciting events, he would change its cur- 
rent with a laughable jest or a mirth-provok- 
ing pun. On one occasion, when he overheard a 
lady speaking to her so earnestly in praise of him- 
self, that Mary was moved to lay her hand upon 
the eulogist's shoulder, he suddenly stepped to them 
and said: 

" Come, come, we must not talk sentimentally !" 
and then he began to rattle off some of his gayest 
nonsense. 

The strain of this constant anxiety on the 
brother's part was terrible. It made him nervous, 
irritable, melancholy at times, and wrote deep lines 



132 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

of suffering on his expressive countenance, which 
said Coleridge, "went to the heart of his friends." 
But it never made him bitter, morose, morbid, or 
violent. When his elastic spirit rose from the 
depth of its depression, its reaction was seen by his 
friends in bursts of wild, fantastic gayety, which 
made him a problem to strangers and a charming 
mystery to his friends. Its most serious effect on 
him was to drive him to the free use of intoxicating 
drinks. The habits of society were all against him 
in this temptation; and while the warmest admirers 
of this much-tried, gentle soul can not exonerate him 
from blame for this weakness, they yet mingle a large 
proportion of pity with their regretful censure. 

In 1802 we find Mary sufficiently vigorous to 
accompany her brother to the "Lakes," on a visit 
to Coleridge, whose warm sympathies with both 
were as precious ointment poured forth. On their 
return they found Wordsworth and his sister in 
London, they having just returned from a trip to 
the Continent. Dorothy Wordsworth was a woman 
after Mary's own heart, at least so far as their love 
for their respective brothers was concerned. Cir- 
cumstances excepted, Dorothy was to Wordsworth 
what Mary was to Lamb. Both were examples of 
rare and beautiful sisterly devotion. 



MARY LAMB. 133 

Poverty, though it never created genius, has often 
been a spur to its development where it lay idle or 
latent. In the case of Mary Lamb, who, if not a 
genius, was highly gifted with talent, it did this 
latter office in that the insufficiency of her brother's 
income to meet their growing wants, despite her 
rare economical abilities, moved her to enter the 
field of authorship. Her malady forbade close 
mental application. Yet during her lucid interval 
in 1806 she undertook to transform fourteen of 
Shakespeare's plays into stories for children. Her 
fondness for children furnished her inspiration for 
this task; her clear perceptive qualities, her shrewd- 
ness, and her tact fitted her to do it well. Lamb who, 
to her fourteen dramas, added six tragedies, assisted 
and encouraged her. His fun made their work seem 
like play at times, as appears by the following ex- 
tract from one of her letters to a lady friend : 

"You would like to see us," she writes, "as we 
often sit writing at one table (but not on one cush- 
ion), sitting like Hermia and Helena in the ' Mid- 
summer Night's Dream/ or rather like an old literary 
Darby and Joan, I taking snuff, and he groaning 
all the while, and saying he can make nothing 
of it, which he always says till he has finished, and 
then finds out he has made something of it." 



134 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

In one of Lamb's letters we find him laughingly 
saying: "Mary begins to think Shakespeare must 
have wanted imagination ! I flatter her with telling 
how well such and such a play is done." 

Thus cheered and encouraged, this afflicted lady, 
who must have written in hourly apprehension of 
a visitation of her dreadful malady, completed her 
contract. Her " Tales from Shakespeare," duly, 
though not satisfactorily, illustrated, appeared in 
the book market. " Their success," says Mrs. Gil- 
christ, " was decisive and complete. New editions 
were called for," and even now " hardly a year passes 
but a new edition is called for" in England; albeit 
they are but little known in America. 

Mary's next literary venture was a volume often 
short tales for children, entitled "Mrs. Leicester's 
School." Of these Charles was the author of three. 
These simple stories were praised with "whimsical 
extravagance" by Landor; and Coleridge, scarcely 
less extravagant, said: "It at once soothes and 
amuses me to think — nay, to know — that the time 
will come when this little volume of my dear, well- 
nigh oldest friend, Mary Lamb, will be not only 
enjoyed, but acknowledged as a rich jewel in the 
treasury of our permanent English literature." 
These opinions were inspired more by friendly 



MARY LAMB. 135 

feeling than by unbiased critical judgment. There 
was, nevertheless, a measure of truth in them which 
the public acknowledged by rapidly buying up the 
first edition, and calling for several more during the 
ensuing five years. The volume is still found in 
the English book-market. 

To the mental strain caused by the composition 
of these stories, the fatigue of two removals was 
added in 1809; and poor Mary was forced to aban- 
don her household gods and her writing-desk, and 
submit once more to the necessary restraints of the 
mad-house. 

"What sad, large pieces/' exclaimed her dis- 
tressed brother, " it cuts out of life ! — out of her 
life, who is getting rather old [Mary was then forty- 
five], and we may not have many years to live to 
gether. I bear it worse than ever I did." 

"Poetry for Children, Entirely Original/' was 
the title of a volume of little poems, "the joint 
production of Mary and me," as Lamb called it. 
It was published in the Summer of 1809, probably 
while Mary was crushed beneath her affliction. 
This also had a large sale, but " ultimately dropped 
out of sight." It was Mary's last book, though she 
subsequently wrote occasionally for the periodicals 
of the day. Neither these poems, nor her "Stories" 



136 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

and "Tales," nor all together, entitle her to rank 
with women of genius. But taking her lack of 
early education, the unfavorable circumstances in 
which her youth and early womanhood were passed, 
and the mental derangements to which she was so 
long subjected, into account, they suggest, if they 
do not amply prove, that with favorable opportuni- 
ties for mental culture, and with a mind unimpaired 
by hereditary madness, she would have won no mean 
degree of celebrity in the literary world. 

As this is only a sketch, not a biography, further 
space can not be given to the details of Mary's later 
life. It would be interesting to accompany her and 
Charles to the various homes they occupied, to 
share the pleasures of their holiday trips, to peruse 
her letters, to sit with them in the gatherings of 
their many literary friends at their famous evening 
supper parties where, if there was less learning, 
stateliness, and splendor than at the much celebrated 
assemblies of Holland House, there was equal intel- 
lectual brightness and no less genial wit; albeit, 
it must be confessed that too much of their joviality 
owed its inspiration to flagons of strong ale, and 
tumblers of brandy and water; but it must suffice 
us in this paper to sum up the events of their sub- 
sequent years in a few words. 



MARY LAMB. 137 

Mary never freed herself from the assaults of 
her hereditary foe. After 1824, a year which was 
marked by unusual freedom from his visitations, 
she was more and more frequently compelled to 
take up her abode with the unfortunate victims of 
mental distraction. The duration of her attacks 
became longer, until in 1833, Lamb wrote Words- 
worth : " Half her life she is dead to me, and the 
other half is made anxious with fears and lookings 
forward to the next shock." In 1834 Charles died 
of erysipelas, brought on by an accidental fall which 
wounded his face. At the time of his departure, 
though not actually insane, Mary's mind was so far 
under a cloud as not to clearly comprehend what a 
loss had befallen her. And she remained in that 
condition for nearly a year after he had passed away. 
Thus, for once, her disease was her friend in a time 
of her great need. 

When again in her right mind, and made fully 

aware that her brother was in the grave, she took 

in the sad fact with calmness. Nevertheless "she 

refused to leave Edmonton. He was there asleep in 

the old church-yard, beneath the turf near which 

they had stood together, and had selected for a 

resting-place. To this spot she used when well to 

stroll out mournfully in the evening; and to this 

12 



138 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

spot she would contrive to lead any friend who 
came in on Summer evenings to tea, and went out 
with her afterward for a walk." His very grave 
seemed to tranquillize her feelings. Thirteen years 
after her brother's death, on the 28th of May, 1847, 
her body was laid with his in the same grave. She 
had lived eighty-three years. 

To what purpose had Mary Lamb lived? the 
reader may ask. If for no other, surely for this — 
to give the world a rich and rare example of de- 
voted, beautiful, sisterly affection. With all the 
anxiety and care that her mental upsettings brought 
him, Charles Lamb in the last year of his life wrote : 
"I could nowhere be happier than under the same 
roof with her." But this was but the expression 
of his love for her, not hers for him, it may be 
urged. Very true. But how rich, sweet, patient, 
and pure must have been Mary's disposition and 
character to win such an enduring regard from the 
sensitive, excitable, and singularly constituted 
Charles Lamb? 

Was Mary Lamb a Christian? Nominally, yes. 
She appears to have had at least an intellectual be- 
lief in the truths of our holy religion. Of her 
inner religious life nothing appears either in her 
biography, or in that of her brother. Charles 



' MARY LAMB. 139 

evidently lived in and for the present. His morals 
were not unimpeachable. He shrunk from serious 
thought of the future. Perhaps Mary, whose 
moral virtues were unblemished, thought and felt 
as he did on the great question of experimental 
godliness. Perhaps not. But this much one may 
say, that if to her rare sweetness of disposition, to 
her patience, to her self-sacrifice, to her indefatiga- 
ble industry, and her more than ordinary literary 
ability, she had added that experimental faith in 
the Gospel, and that tender love for the Lord Jesus 
which are the brightest adornments of human na- 
ture, she would have ranked, not merely among 
women famous for sisterly affection, intellectual 
gifts, and social virtues, but also among those elect 
ladies whose saintliness entitles them to the rever- 
ence and love of mankind. 



Ulllllllllllll 



lllllillllilllllllllllll llillllllllll lllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll 



^m 
m^ 



illllillllllllJIIIIlllJIli! 






mm 



win 

m 



VI. 



Rmrjces l\i<aley H&vem&L 



1 Flowers bloom along the way that Duty treads, 
And as thou goest on thy stern, high path 
Glimpses will come to thee of heavenly joys 
Transcending all the "base world reckons of." 



HE ideal woman is one who, to gentleness of 

manners and sweetness of natural disposition, 

@#S> adds the graces of intellectual culture and the 

y adornments of Christian faith and love. Of 

such a woman a poet sung : 

" Her beauty was a godly grace ; 
The mystery of loveliness, 

Which made an altar of her face, 
Was not of the flesh, though that was fair; 

But a most pure and lambent light, 
Without a name, by which the rare 

And virtuous spirit flamed to sight." 
Personal beauty and mental accomplishments 
impart a certain charm to women, but they can not 

kindle that " lambent light " which is the source 
140 



FRANCES RIDLEY HAVEROAL. 141 

of the highest type of female loveliness, and which 
makes the daughters of the Church, to use an in- 
spired comparison, " as corner-stones polished after 
the similitude of a palace." The purpose of this 
sketch is to briefly portray the character of one such 
woman, who, whatever rank may be given her in 
the world of literature, was most assuredly a polished 
corner-stone in the Church of the living God. 

Frances Eidley Havergax. had the good for- 
tune to be the child of truly Christian parents, and 
to be born in a home of abundant comfort, of refine- 
ment, and of very tender affection. She was the 
daughter of William Henry Havergal, rector of 
Astley, Worcestershire, England. She was born 
December 14, 1836, the youngest of six children, 
and was remarkably pretty, bright, and active during 
her infancy. She grew into a fairy-like child, so 
mentally prococious as to be able to read correctly 
and to write in round hand when only four years \ 
old. Shortly after, she was given lessons in French I 
and in music, albeit her instruction was more or 
less informal and irregular. When seven years old 
she began to acquire German by listening, of her 
own free will, to the professor who gave lessons to 
her elder sisters, in the rectory drawing-room. Like 
the distinguished Jaqueline Pascal, she wrote poetry 



142 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

f which was almost " perfect in rhyme and rhythm " 
before she was nine years of age — a gift which she 
seems to have inherited from her devout father. 
These premature developments were not the result 
of undue pressure, but of the spontaneous activities 
of a gifted, buoyant intellect. Frances was not, 
however, a plodding child. She lived a free, glad- 
some life, in a home which was to her a warm nest 
of love and cheerfulness, and when out of doors 
took as much delight as a wild boy might find in 
climbing a tree or scaling a wall. It seemed as 
natural to her to acquire knowledge as it was to 
work off her excess of animal spirits in active 
amusements. 

Seeing that Miss Havergal's career was chiefly 
marked by the spirituality of her mind and her 
abundant success in winning souls, the reader will 
very naturally desire to trace her inner life back to 
its beginnings. Were her natural inclinations toward 
the spiritual life stronger than in children generally ? 
some may inquire. She herself has answered this 
question in the negative. Though living in a home 
whose atmosphere was in no mean sense like the 
air of heaven, in which conversation, action, spirit, 
and reading were all in harmony with the law of 
Christ, yet she tells us that up to her seventh year 



FRANCES RIDLEY HA VERGAL. 143 

she had no religious impressions whatever. When 
about that age a sermon on the future life filled her 
mind with troubled thoughts, and subsequently led 
her to pray in secret, and to desire that God would 
" make her a Christian." She was doubtless then 
for a long time under conviction for sin, but owing 
to a perverse indisposition " to be talked to " by 
those she loved best, she concealed her feelings, 
albeit they were to her at times like burning coals 
carried in the bosom. 

When she was in her tenth year, her father's 
appointment as canon of Worcester Cathedral and 
rector of St. Nicholas Church, in that city, took her 
from the free country life she had hitherto enjoyed, 
and compelled her to become, as her father called 
her, " a caged lark " in a city rectory. It was a bit- 
ter trial to her young heart, seeing that her love 
of nature had become almost a passion. Shortly 
after her arrival at Worcester, a sermon by her 
father's curate so strengthened her desire to be a 
Christian that she sought his advice. But the curate 
either did not comprehend her state of mind, or 
was so experimentally ignorant of the way of faith, 
that instead of teaching her bewildered young soul 
how to find rest in Jesus through simple faith, he 
merely bade her " try to be a good child and to 



144 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

pray;" and then, he said, her bad feelings would 
" soon go off." This was giving the dear, thought- 
ful child a stone, instead of the bread for which she 
hungered, and which, but for her strange unwilling- 
ness to tell her thoughts to her parents, she -might 
then have found. 

When she was eleven years old Frances was 
called to drink her first cup of bitter earthly grief. 
Her fond, gentle, devoted mother died, and she was 
for a time disconsolate. Her father wisely took her 
and her sisters from the house of death, on a trip to 
North Wales. Seeing new objects broke the flow 
of her sorrow, and on her return her animal spirits 
recovered, in great measure, their wonted activity, 
though, as she afterwards wrote, her grief still 
affected her very deeply at times. Yet, if any thing 
else attracted her attention, she had a happy faculty 
of forgetting her great grief for the moment. "And 
thus it happened," she says, " that a merry laugh or 
a sudden light-heeled scamper up-stairs and down- 
stairs, led others to think I had not many sad' 
thoughts; whereas, not a minute before, my little 
heart was heavy and sad." Thus, as is probably 
the case with most thoughtful children, not even 
her nearest friends could fathom the mysteries of 
her child nature. 



FRANCES RIDLEY HA VERGAL. 145 

In this disturbed state of mind, this interesting 
girl continued for five years, learning more and more 
of the evil in her heart, constantly reading the 
Scriptures, praying for faith which she knew not 
how to exercise, and still studiously hiding her 
mental exercises, beneath a cheerful demeanor, from 
friends who would have gladly led her to the " light 
of life." When thirteen years old, she was sent to 
a young ladies' school at Belmont, which was con- 
ducted by a Mrs. Teed, who was a truly Christian 
teacher. The spirit of this institution was truly 
religious. It pupils were taught that while it was 
important to acquire secular knowledge, it was still 
more important to " know God and his Son Jesus 
Christ." Such teaching could not well fail of 
spiritual results, and toward the close of Miss Hav- 
ergaPs first term it culminated in a powerful revival. 
Many of the young ladies were led to pluck sweet 
fruit from the tree of life.* Miss HavergaPs sensi- 
tive mind responded to those quickening energies 
of the Holy Spirit. She became increasingly desir- 
ous to find Him for whom she had so long and, as it 
seemed, so vainly sought. Still her reticence kept 
her from making her anxieties known, until one 
afternoon a young lady whom she loved very dearly, 

sat down by her side and told her with joyful 

13 



146 'SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

tears that she had received the forgiveness of her 
sins through faith in Christ. " He is my Savior," 
she said, " and I am so happy !" and then she urged 
Miss Havergal to look to Him who, she said, " now 
loves you, though you do n't know it." 

After that afternoon Frances ceased to hide her 
religious feelings. She talked with others who had 
recently found salvation. She sought more earnestly 
than ever, but found no peace until during the vaca- 
tion, while visiting at Oakhampton, she opened her 
heart to a Miss Cooke — a lady who was about to 
become her mother-in-law. That lady saw that, 
though the girl was thoroughly in earnest — was 
ready to sacrifice even life, if necessary, for Christ's 
sake, and had faith in the sense of mere belief of 
the truth — yet she had not faith in the sense of 
simple trust. Hence she said to her: "Why 
can not you trust yourself to your Savior at once? 
Supposing that now, at this moment, Christ were 
to come in the clouds of heaven, . . . could 
you not trust him ? Would not his call, his promise, 
be enough for you? Could you not commit your 
soul to him, to your Savior, Jesus?" 

This was the word in season. The long-time 
disheartened girl grew breathless. Hope sent a 
bright ray into her heart as she responded, " I could. 



FRANCES RIDLEY HA VERGAL. 147 

surely." And then hastening to her chamber she 
dropped upon her knees before the Lord, committed 
her soul to his keeping for eternity, and, as the 
persuasion arose within her, that he was faithful, 
and would keep what she intrusted to his keeping, 
" earth and heaven " grew bright from that moment. 
And she wrote of that crucial point in her life, "I 
did trust the Lord Jesus." 

It is singular that with a mind so acute and 
bright, with so much religious instruction from truly 
pious parents, with habits of prayer and of Bible 
reading, with such deep spiritual convictions, and 
with such strenuous desire to be the Lord's disciple, 
this young lady should have groped so long and 
darkly after the faith by which all souls must enter 
into the rest promised by Jesus to all who come to 
him. Doubtless there was a lack of definiteness in 
all that had been taught her concerning faith, until 
Miss Cooke led her to see the difference between 
mere intellectual belief and heart trust. Yet her 
own stubborn refusal to be "talked to" about her 
personal relations to Christ must be accepted as the 
principal cause of her many days of darkness. But 
for that, her deceased mother, her truly devout 
father, or her pious elder sister, might, probably 
would, have given her the light imparted at last by 



148 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

Miss Cooke. Pride, self-will, and a secret recoil 
from the spiritual claims of the Gospel, no doubt 
entered into her reticence and stubbornness. When 
these dispositions were surrendered, light broke in 
upon her mind, and she received the faith by which 
she was to become a burning and a shining light. 

The birth of the spiritual life did not check 
Miss HavergaPs intellectual aspirations. It rather 
stimulated them by adding to the pleasures of acqui- 
sition the spur of moral motives. " I can not bear 
to be ignorant," she wrote. She thought "that 
earthly learning would not tempt her to forget 
heavenly things." There was no need of its doing 
so; but such was the enthusiasm with which she 
pursued her secular studies, first at a school near 
Worcester, and then at an institution in Diisseldorf, 
Germany, that they did not only tempt her to for- 
get the heavenly, but actually succeeded for a time 
in hindering her spiritual growth. "Day after 
day," she writes, " I grew more eager for my lessons, 
and less earnest in seeking Jesus." But this lessen- 
ing of her zeal for Christ was only temporary. It 
checked but did not choke the divine life, which lived 
on, while she pursued her studies in French, in Ger- 
man, in Italian, in general literature, in Greek, in 
Hebrew, and in music. In the Diisseldorf school, 



FRANCES RIDLEY HA VERGAL. 149 

notwithstanding some attacks of illness, she stood first 
among one hundred and ten pupils. Her teachers 
there rightly enough regarded her as a remarkably- 
gifted young lady, with a singular aptitude for ac- 
quiring languages, and an uncommon capacity for 
perceiving and enjoying the beauties of the best 
literature. 

Her school life terminated in 1853, but not her 
pursuit of knowledge, which she loved, not for its 
own sake alone, but also because, as she wrote in 
1866, It "fitted her to do the Master's work." Her 
external life, spent for the next few years partly at 
home and partly as a private teacher in the family 
of one of her sisters, was by no means marked by 
stirring incidents. In fact, Miss Havergal's life 
interests the public, not because of its eventfulness, 
but because of its spirituality, earnestness in Chris- 
tian work, and uncommon usefulness. 

Looking, therefore, for the influences which tended 
to the development of her religious life, we find that 
she was greatly quickened, after her arrival home 
from Diisseldorf, by the solemnities of the cathedral 
services at her "confirmation." To very many, if 
not to most persons, this ritualistic and non-scrip- 
tural performance is little else than a lifeless form. 
In her case it was a very profitable ceremony. She 



150 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

entered into the inner meaning of its forms, and 
uttered the required vows, not with lips alone, but 
with her heart. As she knelt before the bishop she 
prayed, "My God, O my own Father, thou blessed 
Jesus, my own Savior, thou Holy Spirit, my own Com- 
forter." When called on to promise fidelity to her 
baptismal vows, she said in her heart : " Lord, I can 
not, without thee, but O, with thy almighty help, 
I do!" And when in the final prayer it was asked 
that she " may continue thine forever," her heart 
swelled and thrilled with the thought, " Thine for- 
ever!" And after returning home she wrote: 

"O, thine forever! What a blessed thing 
To be forever his who died for me ! 
My Savior, all my life thy praise I'll sing, 
Nor cease my song throughout eternity." 

From this time her experience became a con- 
stant yearning after a perfect faith. Its key-notes 
were : " O, to be filled with joy and the Holy 
Ghost!" "O, why can not I trust him fully?" 
"O, that I could grow up in him!" These deep 
desires were no sickly and fitful sentimentalities, 
but the healthy longings of a truly devout mind. 
She fed these lofty aspirations, not with mystical fan- 
cies or fanatical imaginations, but with holy Scrip- 
ture systematically read, constantly searched, and 



FRANCES RIDLEY HA VERGAL. 151 

prayerfully accepted as words spoken to her by their 
divine Author. Speaking of her love of God's Word 
her sister writes: 

"She knew the whole of the Gospels, Epistles, 
Revelation, the Psalms, and Isaiah. The minor 
prophets she learned in later years. At this time 
(1858) she was taking the titles of Christ for her 
daily searchings and remarks." And Frances her- 
self, speaking of her method of reading Scripture, 
says: "Yesterday I took Christ, our advocate. It 
is one of the sweet titles. I like to think about the 
Lord Jesus as he is in himself, not only in relation 
to myself." 

Thus striving to use the Word as a revelation 
of Christ, her growth was steadfast, and her spiritual 
life soon grew into a perennial Spring. Writing of 
some particular experience at this time, she said : 
"I really then took a step onward. . . . The 
truth made me free. I lost that dreary bondage 
of doubt, and almost despair, that chained me 
for so many years. . . . Whereas, I could not 
see why I should be saved, I now can not see why 
I should not be saved, if Christ died for all. On 
that word I take my stand, and rest there. I still 
wait for the hour when he will reveal himself to 
me more directly; but it is the quiet waiting of 



152 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

present trust, not the restless waiting of anxiety and 
danger. His death is really my confidence, and I 
have tasted the sweetness of one new thing — praise/" 

Holding this Scriptural conception of faith, one 
might reasonably expect to find Frances abiding 
henceforth on the high table-lands of settled peace. 
Her letters, however, show that she was often driven 
into the gloomy valleys of doubt. Reasoning on the 
causes of these seasons of mental depression, she 
wrote: "I think the great root of all my trouble 
and alienation is, that I do not now make an un- 
reserved surrender of myself to God, and until this 
is done I shall know no peace. I have so much to 
regret, a greater dread of the opinion of worldly 
friends, a loving of the world, and proportionate 
cooling in heavenly desire and love." 

Again she gives the result of her self-scrutiny 
in these expressive words: "I want to make the 
most of my life, and to do the best with it; but 
here I feel my desires and motives need much puri- 
fying; for even where all would sound fair enough 
in words, an element of self, of lurking pride, may 
be detected. O, that He would indeed purify me, 
and make me white at any cost!" 

Later on we find her saying: "It seems as if 
the Lord had led me into a calmer and more equable 



FRANCES RIDLEY HAVERGAL. 153 

frame of mind ; not joy, but peace. . . . Why 
should I not take for granted all I find in the 
Bible ? . . . I have been so happy lately, and 
the words, 'Thou hast put gladness in my heart/ 
I can use as true of my own case, especially as to 
one point. I am sure now (and I never was before) 
that I do love God. I love him distinctly, posi- 
tively, and I think I have loved him more and 
longer than I thought, only I dared not own it to 
myself. O, that I loved him more and more! 
How I abhor myself for having loved, for loving-, 
so little." 

Doubtless, while under these leadings of the 
Spirit, Miss Havergal had underrated her own faith, 
and love. One cause of this was her highly devel? 
oped conscientiousness. Her standard of action and 
feeling was high. Things of which many Christians 
would take no note, she regarded as serious offenses. 
Hence we find her writing to a friend: "I said 
something yesterday, dear Elizabeth, which I much 
regret, though thoughtlessly and not intentionally 
uttered. I thought after that it seemed like an 

imputation upon ; the faintest impression of 

which I would remove from your mind. Perhaps 
you did not notice it; but I did, and grieved that 
I said it." 



154 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

Having such a keenly sensitive conscience, and 
a habit of constant introspection, joined to an emo- 
tional nature, which for a long time led her to 
bring the question of her relation to God to the test 
of feeling, it is not surprising that this devout soul, 
whose spotless life was a daily self-denial, whose 
aspirations breathed after the highest, and whose 
bodily frame was fragile as a flower, and subject to 
frequent attacks of illness, should be often found 
in the valley of humiliation writing bitter things 
against herself. And it was not until she learned 
to keep her mental eye looking, not upon herself, 
but upon Jesus, that she escaped from her doubts. 
Then she wrote: "As soon as 'P in any form comes 
in, there is a shadow upon the light. Still this 
shadow need not fall. When the eye is fixed upon 
Christ as the substitute, the lamb slain, then all is 
clear. But once introduce that '1/ and you get 
bewildered between faith and feeling." 

But to get that "I" from clouding the vision 
of faith, she learned at last that the " I " must be 
fully surrendered, inwardly as well as outwardly 
consecrated, to the absolute control of her Lord. 
Glimpses of this duty had been given her by the 
Holy Spirit for some time; but it was not until 
1873 that she clearly comprehended its breadth, its 



FRANCES RIDLE Y HA TERGAL. 155 

obligation, and its attainability through simple faith. 
A tractate, entitled "All for Jesus," was then sent 
her by a friend. It attracted her attention, because 
it pointed the way to a state of mind for which she 
was earnestly yearning, and toward which the Spirit 
was leading her. She thus described its effects 
upon her experience : 

" I first saw clearly the blessedness of true con- 
secration. I saw it as a flash of electric light; and 
what you see you can never unsee. There must be 
full surrender before there can be full blessedness. 
God admits you by the one into the other. He him- 
self showed me all this most clearly. . . . First, I 
was shown that ' the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, 
cleanseth us all from sin;' and then it was made 
plain to me that he who had thus cleansed me had 
power to keep me clean; so I just utterly yielded 
myself to him, and utterly trusted him to keep me." 

Was ever the faith that opens the gate to the 
highest attainable purity on earth more simply, 
more beautifully defined? Utterly yielding, and 
utterly trusting — the whole being given to God, 
and an unquestioning trust that he would fulfill his 
promise! These are, indeed, the keys to the inner 
sanctuary of Christian saintliness. By them Miss 
Havergal passed out of the " sunless ravines," in 



156 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

which she had often walked with her harp unstrung, 
into the "highway of holiness/' where, henceforth, 
says her sister, "her peace and joy flowed onward, 
deepening and widening under the teaching of God 
the Holy Ghost." And she herself declared, "The 
blessing she had received lifted her whole life into 
sunshine, of which all she had previously experi- 
enced was but as pale and passing April gleams, 
compared with the fullness of Summer glory." 

Of the genuineness of this high experience her 
subsequent life was a constant illustration. Her 
sister testifies that it shone conspicuously in "the 
unswerving obedience of her home life" which, as 
she well observes, "is the surest test of all." It 
was visible in her endurance of trials and losses, 
both great and small, which were no longer causes 
of worriment and vexed feelings. It was manifest in 
her humility of spirit, which, while rejoicing that she 
was " kept from falling, kept from sins, ... by the 
power of God," confessed that "one instant of stand- 
ing alone" would involve "a certain fall" into sin; 
that God's "very keeping implies total helplessness 
without it, and the very cleansing most distinctly 
implies defilement without it." 

An intense hatred of sin was another evidence 
of the genuineness of this blessed life. Sin had 



FRANCES RIDLEY HA VERGAL. 157 

become to her an intolerable thing, against which 
she " watched like a sentinel when his captain is 
standing by him on the ramparts." And with all 
her frankness in writing and speaking to her friends 
of this new-born blessedness, she was too modest 
and too truthful to profess herself absolutely sin- 
less. " Sinlessness," she said, "belongs only to 
Christ now, and to our glorified state in heaven." 
Hence she continued to pray, "Cleanse me thor- 
oughly from my sin ;" and pleaded to be shown any 
unknown depths of it which might have been 
hidden from her through lack of sufficient light. 
"Understand me," she wrote, "it is not as though 
I had already attained, either were already perfect, 
but I follow after, I press toward the mark, for the 
prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." 

In Miss HavergaPs manner and spirit there 
appears to have been no real or affected austerity, 
no forbidding primness, no repulsive gloominess. 
On the contrary, "joyousness" was the characteristic 
of her spiritual life. She always had been remark- 
ably cheerful. She was so still. The abiding glad- 
ness within had its expression in her face and action. 
Hence it was a common remark among her acquaint- 
ances, "Frances looks so really happy, she must 
have something we have not." And her sister 



158 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

says that, " with the utmost skill, no artist or pho- 
tograph gives a real idea of her lighted-up ex- 
pression. Is it because soul can not be represented 
any more than a sunbeam? And my pen too fails 
in giving an idea to strangers of her sunny ways, 
merrily playing with children, and heartily enjoying 
all things. But her deep sympathy with others' joys 
and sorrows, and her loyal longings that all should 
know the joy unspeakable and full of glory, were 
the secret of her influence with others." 

Another fruit of her exalted attainment was an 
increase in her zeal for Christ and human souls. 
She had been early trained by her devout father 
to love benevolent work. While yet at Worcester, 
she had been a worker for the poor. After her 
conversion she had done admirable work in her 
father's parish Sunday-school, at St. Nicholas. Two 
successive classes of boys, who had seemed incorri- 
gible, had been intrusted to her care, and had been 
wonderfully benefited by her affectionate and faith- 
ful teaching. Her rare musical gifts she had made 
to do good service, by "singing for Jesus," and 
composing hymns which were much sought after, 
and many of which have won a permanent place in 
sacred psalmody. Her " cards," and her writings for 
various periodicals had also been the fruitage of 



FRANCES RIDLEY HAVERGAL. 159 

her Christian activity. In all these departments 
she had illustrated the activity of her faith. Her 
increased faith added fuel to the already steadfast 
flame of her zeal. Up to the extreme measure of 
her strength she now kept her facile pen employed, 
and the works she produced were very widely read. 
Perhaps, however, in nothing was the effect of her 
stronger faith more fully seen than in the increased 
effectiveness of her personal efforts to win souls. 
Her skill in this difficult sphere of action was 
singularly great. She was an adept in the art of 
speaking for Christ. She could do it in social meet- 
ings, in parlor readings, and in conversation with 
individuals in such a manner that, though it might 
sometimes fail in making a conquest, yet it did not 
alienate the individual either from herself or from 
religion. She did it, too, when need required, under 
circumstances ordinarily considered unfavorable. 
At a large party, for example, when asked to sing, 
she selected a spiritual song, and rendered it with 
such deep feeling that it subdued the giddy throng 
into " dead silence." "Writing of this incident, she 
adds: 

" Afterwards I had two really important conver- 
sations with strangers. One seemed extremely sur- 
prised at finding himself quite easily drifted from 



160 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

the badinage with which he started, into a right 
down personal talk about his personal danger and 
his only hope for safety; he took it very well, and 
thanked me." 

The secret of her effectiveness in such personal 
conversation is revealed, where she says: " Somehow 
it is wonderful how the Master manages for me in 
such cases. I do n't think any one can say that I 
force the subject; it just develops one thing out of 
another, quite naturally, till very soon they find 
themselves face to face with eternal things, and the 
Lord Jesus can be freely lifted up before them. I 
could not contrive a conversation thus." 

Of course she could not contrive, for there was 
no cant, nothing perfunctory, in her Christian work. 
Christ and his Gospel were to her living facts. 
She really lived in them and for him. It was, there- 
fore, as natural for her to speak of them as of the 
realities of her material life and surroundings. Per- 
haps much of the influence of her numerous hymns 
and excellent books arises out of her strong sense of 
the reality of the things about which she wrote. But 
for this, some of her writings would impress one as 
the outflow of a woman's sentimentalism. They do, 
indeed, abound in sentiment, but it is not the shal- 
low sentiment of empty feeling, but the expression 



FRANCES RIDLEY HAVERGAL. 161 

of solid truth, impregnated with the genuine emo- 
tion of a soul thoroughly possessed by it. 

Miss HavergaPs faith bore the test of many 
external trials, bereavements, sickness, and delicate 
health. She had been called to close the eyes of 
her beloved father in 1870. In 1874 she suffered 
long from typhus fever. In 1878 her "second 
mother" passed the mysterious river we call Death, 
and, as a consequence, the family home-nest was 
broken up, and she sought a quiet retreat with her 
sister Marie, in Wales, at a place named the Mum- 
bles, in the town of Swansea. In 1879 her fragile 
body was attacked by a painful and mortal disease. 
Her sufferings were intense. When nearing her 
end, one of her physicians said to her, " Good-bye; 
I shall not see you again." Very composedly she 
asked him : 

w Do you really think I am going ?" 

"Yes," replied the doctor. 

"To-day?" she inquired. 

" Probably," said he. 

" Beautiful ; too good to be true !" she ex- 
claimed; and then, after a pause, she smiled and 
added, " Splendid ! to be so near the gates of heaven." 

In this glad frame of mind she awaited the final 
moment. Its coming was announced by terrible 

14 



162 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

convulsions. When they ceased she nestled down 
in the pillows, folded her hands on her breast, and 
said, "There, now it is all over! Blessed rest!" 

"And now," says her sister, "she looked up 
steadfastly, as if she saw the Lord, and surely noth- 
ing less heavenly could have reflected such a glori- 
ous radiance upon her face. For ten minutes we 
watched that almost visible meeting with her King, 
and her countenance was so glad, as if she were 
already talking to him. Then she tried to sing; 
but after one sweet high note, i He — / her voice 
failed, and, as her brother commended her soul into 
her Kedeemer's hand, she passed away. . . . 
So she took 

' The one grand step beyond the stars of God 
Into the splendor, shadowless and broad, 
Into the everlasting joy and light, 

The zenith of the earthly life was come.' " 

Frances was in her prime when she finished her 
earthly Avork. Only forty-two years were permitted 
her in this preparatory school for the life which is 
to be lived, and the duties which are to be per- 
formed in the city of our God. But she had made 
those years fruitful, through the grace of Christ, in 
building her own character into beauty and strength, 
and in good works for the benefit of others. Her 



FRANCES RIDLEY HA VERGAL. 163 

noble character is a precious legacy to the Church 
and the world. To young women it is especially 
valuable, as showing them that when a woman adds 
the adornments of elevated piety to the charm of 
her personal attraction and intellectual gifts, she not 
only attains the highest degree of possible human 
happiness for herself, but is also made instrumental 
of immeasurable good to others. Multitudes now 
call Miss Havergal blessed. Why? Because she 
was a gifted, cultivated lady, with winning manners? 
Nay, not for these endowments alone. Had she 
lived a selfish life, seeking her pleasure in dress, in 
amusements, in gay assemblies, in the delights of 
this life, to whom would her life have been a rich 
guerdon? Who would revere and cherish her mem- 
ory to-day ? Not for her gifts, therefore, is she 
lovingly remembered by multitudes, but because 
those gifts were consecrated to Christ and to human 
good. Because she was a woman inspired by a 
faith founded on the Word of God ; nourished by 
that Word made radiant by the divine illumination, 
she lives, and will live in the memory of coming 
generations, as a beautiful illustration of the power 
of piety to sanctify and enlarge the influence of 
woman. " Favor is deceitful and beauty is vain ; but 
a woman thatfeareth the Lord, she shall be praised." 



iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiijiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii 




YII. 
neliciec Herr)<a:r)S, 



" We do not hesitate to say that Mrs. Hemans is, beyond 
all comparison, the most touching and accomplished writer of 
occasional verses that our literature has yet to boast of." 

— Edinburgh Review. 



tf N the above epitaph we have the verdict of the 
leading literary Review of our Fatherland some 

r sixty years since, respecting the poems of Mrs. 
Hemans. This approving criticism found its 
echo on this side of the Atlantic in the unprece- 
dented demand of American readers for her works. 
Professor Norton, of Cambridge, was so impressed 
with the beauty and sweetness of her poems, that 
he sent her a letter, with a book, by the hand of a 
friend, who accidentally dropped it on the sands of 
Ulverstone, in England. The packet was picked 
up, badly injured by its wetting, taken to a little 
wayside inn, and placed near the fire to dry. There 



164 



FELICIA HEMANS. 165 

it was noticed by an intelligent gentleman, who, 
after deciphering its address, forwarded it to Mrs. 
Hermans. The letter contained a generous offer 
from the friendly and admiring professor to super- 
intend the republication of her writings in this 
country. She gladly and gratefully accepted his 
proffered aid. The popularity of her poems led 
some distinguished Americans to become her corre- 
spondents. Among these was that devout lover of 
noble thought and pure morality, Dr. Channing. It 
also became fashionable for Americans traveling in 
England to call on Mrs. Hemans. Mr. Chorley, 
author of her " Memorials," says, perhaps with 
some exaggeration : 

"I remember seeing a beautiful girl from New 
York much excited and awe-struck at the thought 
of being admitted to her presence. ' My friends at 
home/ she said, 'will think so much of me for hav- 
ing seen Mrs. Hemans !' " 

It may be because of a change in the taste of 
readers, or possibly because of the shoals of books 
and periodicals which inundate their tables', that the 
poems of Mrs. Hemans are now less generally read 
than in other days. This is to be regretted, espe- 
cially because it prevents many young ladies from 
becoming acquainted with a collection of poems 



166 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

most admirably fitted to refine their tastes, cultivate 
their love of the beautiful, and to guard them 
against their liability — or shall I say, tendency? — 
to permit sentiment to flow into sentimentality, un- 
chastened by the checks and balances of religious 
thought. Mrs. Hemans gives an example of her 
sentiment in her epigraph prefixed to " Constanza," 
one of the poems in her " Records of Woman," in 
which she expresses the feelings of a true wife, whose 
false husband had abandoned her without cause: 

"Art thou, then, desolate? 
Of friends, of hopes, forsaken ? Come to me ! 
I am thine own. Have trusted hearts proved false? 
Flatterers deceived thee ? Wanderer, come to me ! 
Why didst thou ever leave me? Knowest thou all 
I would have borne, and called it joy to bear, 
For thy sake ? Know'st thou that thy voice had power 
To shake me with a thrill of happiness 
By one kind tone — to fill mine eyes with tears 
Of yearning love? And thou — 0, thou didst throw 
That crushed affection back upon my heart; 
Yet come to me ! — it died not." 

These lines were doubtless wrung from her own 
heart, as will appear in the course of the following 
sketch of her somewhat uneventful life. 

Mrs. Hemans was the daughter of a Liverpool 
merchant named Browne. He was a native of 



FELICIA HEMANS. 167 

Ireland. Her mother was of mingled Italian and 
German descent, some of her ancestors having been 
numbered among the doges of Venice. Felicia 
was born in Liverpool, September 25, 1793, but was 
taken to the town of Gwrych (pronounced Grieth), 
in Wales, w T ith her parents when she was less than 
seven years of age. There, in a lonely old mansion 
near the sea, shut in by a picturesque range of 
mountains, she passed the following nine years of 
her childhood, under the care of one of the best 
of mothers. If the reader can imagine an extremely 
beautiful, fairy-like child, with a brilliant complex- 
ion, with a face that constantly changed its color 
with her swiftly-changing thoughts, and with a 
finely-formed head, covered with long, curling, 
golden hair, she will have before her mind an 
image of Felicia Dorothea Browne, as she was 
when little more than five years of age. A lady 
who saw her at this period in one of her sprightly 
moods, observed, " That child is not made for hap- 
piness, I know; her color comes and goes too fast." 
This remark was not meant to imply that little 
Felicia's disposition was unhappy, but only that her 
exquisite sensibilities, indicated by her changing 
color, would cause her to suffer unusually from 
such troubles as might touch her life. In this 



168 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

sense, the woman's words were a prophecy. Felicia 
was quick to drink in delight from the beautiful 
and the good, but she was also quick to suffer keen 
pain when touched by the nettles of evil. 

"Poets are born, not made/' says the popular 
adage, and it was illustrated in Felicia's childhood. 
She revealed her poetic nature in the fantastic 
visions which filled her childish mind ; in her pas- 
sionate love for every grand and beautiful thing in 
nature j in her vague, romantic aspirations ; in the 
pleasure she found in hearing, reading, and reciting 
fragments of poetry; and in that unrest of spirit 
which is born of the early struggles of genius to 
give expression to its as yet cloud-like perceptions. 

She was also a precocious child, eager to acquire, 
quick to learn, and gifted with a remarkable mem- 
ory. " Why, Felice, you can not have read that," 
her teacher often said to her when she went to 
repeat her lesson. " O, yes ! I have, and I will 
repeat it to you," was her prompt reply. And she 
always did, to the astonishment of her teacher, who 
thought her memory to be almost supernatural. 

This gifted child owed much for both her mental 
and spiritual growth to her pious and devoted 
mother, whose love she returned with all the wealth 
of her deep filial affection. In her sonnet " To a 



FELICIA REMANS. 169 

Family Bible," she subsequently drew a picture of 
her mother's methods of training her, which is sur- 
passingly tender and beautiful. Addressing the 
dear old Book, she says: 

" What household thoughts around thee as their shrine 
Cling reverently ! Of anxious looks beguiled 

My mother's eyes, upon thy page divine, 
Each day were bent ; her accents gravely mild, 
Breathed out thy love ; whilst I, a dreamy child, 

Wandered, on breeze-like fancies, far away, 
To some lone tuft of gleaming Spring-flowers wild — 

Some fresh-discovered nook for woodland play ; 
Some secret nest : yet would the solemn Word, 
At times with kindlings of young wonder heard, ■ 

Fall on my wakened spirit, there to be 
A seed not lost ; for which, in darker years, 
0, Book of Heaven ! I pour, with grateful tears, 

Heart-blessings on the holy dead and thee !" 

The solitude of the home of her childhood, with 
the free life permitted her, contributed to the growth 
of her poetic instincts. She rambled at her own 
sweet will in mountain nooks, lowland dells, and 
along the ocean shore, fearing no danger. Tradi- 
tion said the ancient old mansion was haunted, and 
that a fiery goblin grayhound kept nightly watch at 
the end of the avenue leading from its doors. So 
fearless was she of being harmed that one moonlit 

night she crept from her chamber eager to catch a 

15 



170 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

glimpse of the phantom dog. And it was one of 
her childish freaks, after being put snugly to bed 
by her nurse-maid, to steal from her bed to the sea- 
shore, and indulge in the luxury of a bath. This 
half-wild freedom, this confiding familiarity with 
nature, together with her prematurely developed 
capacity to read and appreciate such books as 
Shakespeare's plays, and standard historic works, 
especially histories of Spain, in which land of ro- 
mance one of her brothers was serving in the British 
army under the great Wellington, furnished abun- 
dant food for her fancy. Of systematic education 
she had little. She was never at school. Her prin- 
cipal instructor was a gentleman who gave her les- 
sons in French, English grammar, and the rudiments 
of Latin. So delighted was this teacher with her 
intellectual power that he was wont to say: 

" It is a pity she was not born a man, for then she 
might have borne away the highest honors of a 
college." 

Twice during her girlhood Felicia was taken to 
London by her parents. Many things in that vast 
city impressed her susceptible mind, particularly a 
gallery of statuary, on entering which she exclaimed, 
a O, hush! don't speak!" But amidst all the 
strange sights of the great metropolis, she longed for 



FELICIA HEMANS. 171 

her home by the sea-side, and for the companionship of 
her younger brother and sister, in their favorite rural 
haunts in the woods, and in their rambles along 
the shore, where she could enjoy 

"A sound and a gleam of the moaning sea." 
Felicia's winning manners fascinated all who 
knew her. The old gardener at Gwrych used to 
say, " Miss Felicia can 'tice me to do whatsoever 
she pleases. " A gentleman of the neighborhood was 
so warm in his praises of her character and genius 
that his sister said to him playfully, " Brother, you 
must be in love with that girl." To this he 
promptly replied, " If I were twenty years younger 
I would marry her !" It is not, therefore, a matter 
of surprise that when she was only fifteen years of 
age her friends persuaded her to print a volume 
of her poems, one, at least, of which she had writ- 
ten when only nine years of age. It was published 
in quarto form. Her youth ought to have been her 
shield against the critic's dart. It was partly, but 
not wholly, so. One pitiless reviewer struck her 
work with so sharp a pen that her sensitive young 
soul suffered so keenly that, says Mr. Chorley, one 
of her biographers, "she was confined to her bed 
for several days." Nevertheless, though the gall 
of his pen was bitter, it proved to be a wholesome 



172 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

medicine, in that it stimulated her to study more 
deeply, and to meditate more patiently, before giv- 
ing her future poetic compositions to the world. 
Her second volume, published four years later, gave 
evidence both of the growth of her mind and of 
greater carefulness in weaving her thoughts into 
verse. And Mr. Chorley informs us that her ear- 
liest volume was almost the only one " for the sake 
of which she had to taste the gall, as well as the 
honey of criticism." 

About the time of the publication of her earliest 
poems, there came to the neighborhood of Gwrych 
a soldier whose person, manners, and education were 
such as to awaken the admiration of this susceptible 
and romantic girl. He was a captain in the British 
army. Felicia, says her sister, "was then only fif- 
teen ; in the full glow of that radiant beauty which 
was destined to fade so early. The mantling bloom 
of her cheeks was shaded by a profusion of natural 
ringlets of a rich, golden brown ; and the ever- 
varying expression of her brilliant eyes gave a 
changeful play to her countenance, which made it 
impossible for any painter to do justice to it." To 
cite "Wordsworth's graceful lines : 

"She was a phantom of delight, 
When first she gleamed upon my sight ; 



FELICIA HEMANS. 173 

A lovely apparition, sent 
To be a moment's ornament. 

A dancing shape, an image gay, 
To haunt, to startle, and waylay." 

That such a lovely, gifted girl should charm the 
eyes of a gay young soldier, was natural, as it also 
was that she, so artless, romantic, and full of enthusi- 
asm for the heroes of war, should be won to regard 
him with affection. Neither his friends nor hers 
favored their attachment. On both sides it was 
hoped that, as the captain was about to sail with his 
regiment to Spain, time and distance would dissolve 
the spell of their as yet unripened regard. They 
were mistaken. Spain was to Felicia the land of 
heroes, and when her lover went thither to fight in 
the land of the ancient Cid, her imagination trans- 
formed him into a hero, to whom she freely surren- 
dered her heart. They did not meet again for 
three years, but when they did, in 1812, she became 
the soldier's bride. 

During his absence, Felicia's family had removed 
from Gwrych to Bronwylfa, Flintshire. She had 
more society here than in the former place, but she 
gave herself with supreme devotion to study. To 
her knowledge of French and Italian, she now 



174 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

added the Spanish, Portuguese, and German. She 
astonished her friends, one day, by committing to 
memory the whole of Reginald Heber's poem of 
" Europe," containing four hundred and twenty- 
four lines, in the almost incredibly short space of 
one hour and twenty minutes — a feat of memory 
which shows that the acquisition of languages must 
have been for her a by no means difficult task. 

Her days at Bronwylfa appear to have been 
among the happiest of her life. Congenial society, 
added to the studies she loved, to the pleasures of 
poetical composition, and to the hope begotten of 
the love which nestled in her guileless spirit, made 
her life one long joy. And in 1812, as remarked 
above, she published her second volume, entitled 
" The Domestic Affections and Other Poems," gave 
her hand to Captain Hemans, and removed with 
him to Daventry, England, where they took up 
their residence, because he had been appointed 
adjutant to the Northamptonshire militia. 

Her eldest son, Arthur, was born in Daventry, 
from which place she returned to her mother's 
home at Bronwylfa, at the close of a year. Her 
biographers shed no light on the character of her 
marital relations. One can not tell whether they 
were harmonious or discordant. On her part, she 



FELICIA HEMANS. 175 

was still zealous in the pursuit of knowledge, and 
went very little into society. The captain, her 
husband, seems to have been somewhat broken in 
health. The hardships of Sir John Moore's famous 
retreat to Corunna, in Spain, in which he bore a 
part, and the still greater hardships he endured in 
an unfortunate British military expedition in Hol- 
land, had proved too much for his constitution. Six 
years after his marriage, he therefore determined to 
try the effect of a softer climate. Mrs. Hemans 
thought that her literary pursuits, and the educa- 
tion of their five sons, required her to remain with 
her beloved mother at Bronwylfa. Hence, in 1818, 
he went to Rome, not with any defined purpose of 
separating from her, and, though they corresponded, 
they never met again. Over the real causes which 
led to their divided lives, there hangs a cloud. The 
probability is, that their tastes and habits of thought 
not being wholly congenial, they gradually grew 
apart, and their ill-advised marriage ended in prac- 
tical separation. Nevertheless, if the lines prefixed 
to her poem entitled " Constanza," and cited above, 
were an expression of her feelings, it would appear 
that her affection for her husband, though sorely 
wounded, was never entirely quenched. 

On the departure of her husband, Mrs. Hemans, 



176 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

instead of indulging in indolent sorrow, as a weaker 
woman might have done, threw the full force of 
her active mind into her literary work. In 1819 
she published a poem on Wallace and Bruce, 
which won a prize for which a little army of writers 
had contested. The next year she published "The 
Sceptic," which was warmly praised by the Edin- 
burgh Monthly Magazine, not for its poetic merits 
only, but especially for its freedom from every stain, 
and for the " breath of all moral beauty and love- 
liness" which animated it. The last lines of this 
truly beautiful composition indicate, not only a deep- 
ening of her religious feelings, under her matri- 
monial trials, but also of her maternal interest in 
the spiritual needs of her children. What but this 
could have inspired her pen when, writing of 
" Devotion's Voice " in cottage homes, she said : 

" There may the mother, as with anxious joy 
To heaven her lessons consecrate her boy, 
Teach his young accents still the immortal lays 
Of Zion's bards in inspiration's days ; 

And as, her soul all glistening in her eyes, 

She bids the prayer of infancy arise," , 

Tell of His name who left His throne on high, 

Earth's lowliest lot to bear and sanctify ; 

His love divine by keenest anguish tried, 

And fondly say, " My child, for thee he died !" 



FELICIA HEMANS. 177 

The growth of her genius, shown in the increas- 
ing beauty and strength of her work, now began to 
attract the attention of distinguished men. Such 
notable personages as Dr. Luxmoore, bishop of St. 
Asaph, Reginald Heber, and, a little later, Sir Wal- 
ter Scott, Henry Park, Esq., and Rev. Robert More- 
head, were led to seek her acquaintance and take an 
interest in her growing reputation. In 1821 the 
Royal Society of Literature, having offered a prize 
for the best poem on the subject of " Dartmoor," 
she entered the contest, and was awarded the prize. 
This success gratified her exceedingly, but chiefly 
because of the delight it awoke in her sons, one of 
whom, Arthur, being told the welcome news while 
working on his Latin exercise, sprang from his seat 
and exclaimed in high glee : 

" Now I am sure mamma is a better poet than 
Lord Byron !" 

Her son George gave vent to his joy in deafen- 
ing acclamations, and finally said, " The excess of 
my pleasure has really given me a headache." 

Thus she found the sweetest drop in the cup 
which Fame was bringing to her lips to be the 
happiness with which it swelled the heart of her 
fond mother and of her noble and beloved boys. 
And thus she illustrated in herself the truth of a 



178 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

remark she had often repeated, that " Fame can 
only afford reflected delight to a woman." She 
loves it, not for itself, but because it adds to 
the happiness of the beings in whom she lives her 
own life. 

In 1821, at the suggestion of Reginald Heber, 
she wrote a dramatic poem entitled " The Vespers of 
Palermo." She had no intention when composing it 
to offer it for performance in a theater, but some of 
her admirers urged her to let this beautiful piece 
of dramatic work try its fortunes on the stage. 
She consented, and after manifold vexations and 
delays it was produced in Covent Garden, London, 
under the direction of Mr. C. Kemble. It failed 
to please the corrupt fancies of an audience unused 
to such pure, high-toned thoughts as gave it char- 
acter, though its failure was attributed by Kemble 
and others to the actress who personated Constance, 
its principal female character, which was so much 
above her own she could not fairly represent it. It 
was subsequently acted in Edinburgh with marked 
success, under the auspices of Sir Walter Scott and 
Joanna Baillie, with Mrs. Siddons as Constance. 
But it did not secure a permanent place among 
plays acceptable to the theater-going public. Mrs. 
Hemans did not regret this, for as she became 



FELICIA HEMANS. 179 

better acquainted with the character and influence 
of the theater she lost what little sympathy she had 
at first with the acted drama. The truth is, that the 
theater is too incurably corrupt ever to tolerate such 
lofty-toned dramas as "The Vespers of Palermo;" 
or as the plays of Joanna Baillie and Hannah More, 
which were written for the avowed purpose of test- 
ing the possibility of reforming the stage. And 
within the current year* the present proprietor of 
Covent Garden Theater, London, in a review ar- 
ticle, confesses that after making an experiment 
running through several years, he can not satisfy 
his audiences even with the " legitimate drama ;*" 
that is, standard plays like Shakespeare, etc., but 
that they will have spectacular plays, including the 
disgusting ballet dancers, or withhold their patron- 
age. Surely the theater is not a fitting institution 
for a Christian lady to approve even by writing for 
its benefit, much less is it fit for her to frequent. 
It is one of " the unfruitful works of darkness."" 

In 1825 Mrs. Hemans removed with her mother 
from Bronwylfa to Rhyllon, an adjacent property. 
Here she spent one of the happiest years of her 
life. It was most beautifully situated, and had just 
beyond its sloping lawn a woodland dell in which 
she was wont to sit and read in the soft afternoons 



180 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

of Summer. This romantic spot she described with 
picturesque effect in the following lines found in 
her "Hour of Romance." 

" There were thick leaves above me and around, 

And low, sweet sighs, like those of childhood's sleep, 
Amidst their dimness, and a fitful sound 

As of soft showers on water. Dark and deep 
Lay the oak shadows o 'er the turf — so still, 

They seemed but pictured glooms ; a hidden rill 
Made musics-such as haunts us in a dream — 

Under the fern tufts ; and a tender gleam 
Of soft green light, as by the glow-worm shed, 

Came pouring through the woven beech-boughs down." 

But these months of peaceful brightness and 
cheerful activity spent with her happy boys and her 
thoughtful, loving mother, proved to be the pre- 
cursors of months of gloom and sorrow. In 1826 
death made the hearth-stone of her eldest brother 
"lonely and deserted." The angel of affliction 
then took up his abode at Rhyllon, and her mother, 
whose long years 'of superintending, sympathetic 
care had deluded them into the fancy that for her 
the earth "contained no tomb," was laid on a bed 
of mortal sickness. Through eight weary months 
of suffering that best of mothers gradually lost her 
hold on life, and then her " kind eyes were sealed 
forever" by the gentle hand of the death-angel. 



FELICIA HEMANS. 181 

The feelings of Mrs. Hemans in that sad hour can 
not be better told than in the following touching 
hymn which she composed at the bedside of her 
dying mother: — 

" Father ! that in the olive shade 
When the dark hour came on, 
Did'st with a breath of heavenly aid, 

Strengthen thy Son ; 

0! by the anguish of that night, 

Send us down blest relief ; 
Or to the chastened, let thy might 

Hallow this grief ! 

And thou, that when the starry sky 

Saw the dread strife begun, 
Did'st teach adoring faith to cry, 

1 Thy will be done/ 

By thy meek spirit, thou, of all 

That e'er have mourned the chief— 
Thou Savior ! if the stroke must fall, 

Hallow this grief." 

The effect of the religious training given her 
children by Mrs. Hemans was beautifully illustrated 
in the hour of her mother's death. Wearied with 
grief and watching, she left the chamber of death 
and went down stairs to the room where her chil- 
dren were sitting silent and awe-stricken around the 



182 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

fire. Her face wore such a sad expression that it 
moved them to pity, and her little boy, George, 
said to her with childish tenderness : 

"Please, mamma, let me read you a chapter in 
the Bible; I am sure it will do you good." 

The child thought rightly. The words of God 
did prove to be balm to her wounded heart, and 
the faith of her boy in the healing power of those 
divine words added not a little to her consolation 
in that hour of sorrow. 

In the death of her mother Mrs. Hemans lost 
her chief earthly stay. Her father had died sev- 
eral years earlier. Her husband, except in name, 
was as a stranger to her. Her mother's thoughtful 
care had hitherto relieved her of household respon- 
sibilities. Henceforth the burden of her family 
must rest upon her own shoulders. It was a prime 
necessity also that her literary work should be pros- 
ecuted with unremitting vigor. Her health, which 
had been quite delicate for several years, was inad- 
equate to the strain now put upon it. Painful 
symptoms of disease, with depressions of spirit, 
amounting at times to fits of melancholy, gave her 
occasional intimations that her life henceforth must, 
in part at least, be that of an invalid. It is not, there- 
fore, surprising that she wrote of herself to a friend : 



FELICIA HEMANS. 183 

" My spirits are as variable as the lights and 
shadows now flitting with the wind over the high 
grass, and sometimes the tears gush into my- eyes, 
when I can scarcely define the cause. ... I am 
a strange being, I think. I put myself in mind of 
an Irish melody, with its quick and wild transitions 
from sadness to gayety." 

But she had yet eight years to live, during 
which, ^aid her sister, " she was to be a stranger to 
any thing like an equal flow of quiet, steadfast 
happiness. Fugitive enjoyments; entrancing ex- 
citements; adulation the most intoxicating; society 
the most brilliant — all these, and more than these, 
were hers in after years; but the old home feeling 
of shelter and security was gone forever, ' removed 
like a shepherd's tent.'" 

But notwithstanding these oppressive afflictions, 
her courage still nerved her to obey the impulses 
of her genius, and to complete her most popular 
work, "The Records of Women/' which was pub- 
lished in 1828. "I have put my heart and indi- 
vidual feelings into this volume more than in any 
thing else I have written," she wrote to a friend. 
And there is the inspiration of a heart exquisitely 
tender and affectionate in the poems of which it 
is composed. Take, for example, the following 



184 SOME BEMABKABLE WOMEN. 

extract from the " Bride of the Greek Isle." In her 
farewell to the home of her girlhood, the bride* is 
made to say to her sister: 

" I leave thee, sister ! We have played 

Through many a joyous hour, 
When the silvery green of the olive shade 

Hung dim over fount and bower. 
Yes, thou and I, by stream, by shore, 

In song, in prayer, in sleep, 
Have been as we may be no more — 

Kind sister, let me weep !" 

Then to her mother the Greek bride says : 

" Mother ! I leave thee ! On thy breast, 

Pouring out joy and woe, 
I have found that holy place of rest 

Still changeless ! Yet I go. 
Lips that have lulled me with your strain, 

Eyes that have watched my sleep ! 
Will earth give love like yours again ? 

Sweet mother ; let me weep." 

The bride is then described as turning to her 
husband in these touchingly beautiful lines : 

" And like a slight young tree, that throws 
The weight of rain from its drooping boughs, 
Once more she wept. But a changeful thing 
Is the human heart, as a mountain spring 
That works its way through the torrent's foam 
To the bright pool near it, the lily's home ! 



FELICIA HE MANS. 185 

It is well ! the cloud on her soul that lay 
Hath melted in glittering drops away. 
Wake again ; mingle sweet flute and lyre ! 
She turns to her lover. She leaves her sire. 
Mother ! on earth it must be so : 
Thou rearest the lovely to see them go." 

Shortly after the publication of " The Eecords of 
Women," Mrs. Hemans, partly on account of her sis- 
ter's marriage and removal from Rhyllon, and partly 
because she wished to be nearer educational facilities 
for her sons, left Wales and fixed her residence at 
Wavertree, near Liverpool. This change of abode, 
with her growing popularity, brought her into per- 
sonal communication with many minds eminent in 
the literary world. Her fame spread; her corre- 
spondents multiplied; society opened its doors to 
her; invitations to visit the seats of distinguished 
persons were given her. Accepting one of these, she 
went to Scotland, where she met Sir Walter Scott, who 
treated her with distinguishing attention. He in- 
vited her to visit him at Abbotsford, which she 
did, to her very great satisfaction and delight. In 
bidding her farewell when she left, he said to her : 

"There are some whom we meet, and should 
like ever after to claim as kith and kin ; and you are 

one of these." In writing of this visit to a friend, 

16 



186 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

she said : " It is delightful to take away with me 
so unmingled an impression of what I may now 
call almost affectionate admiration." Nor was Sir 
Walter the only noted personage in Scotland who 
treated her with such affectionate respect, for when 
she went to Edinburgh its most distinguished peo- 
ple showered upon her similar tokens of their regard. 

On her return from Scotland, she wrought on 
her "Songs of the Affections," published in 1830. 
In June of this year she visited the lakes of West- 
moreland, where she gained strength for her en- 
feebled body from its health-giving climate, and 
enjoyment for her mind from her intercourse with 
the patriarchal Wordsworth, who, she said, " treated 
me with so much consideration, gentleness, and care." 

Wavertree was not favorable to the health of 
Mrs. Hemans. She also felt the need of some near 
relative to protect and advise her with respect both 
to her domestic affairs and the education of her 
sons. Her brother was filling a position of high 
responsibility in Ireland, and was anxious to do all 
that fraternal love could suggest to promote her 
welfare. Hence, in 1831, she bade farewell to 
Wavertree and to England, and established herself 
in the city of Dublin. Here she found ample op- 
portunities for the education of her boys, introduc- 



FELICIA HEMANS. 187 

tion to the best society of the place, and in a very- 
short time the warm friendship of Archbishop 
Whately, his amiable wife, and a number of other 
refined, congenial spirits. Mrs. Hemans had so 
many attractive qualities, that she never failed to 
win the strongest regard of every cultivated, serious 
mind to whose society she was introduced. Affec- 
tionate herself, she readily gained the affectionate 
admiration of kindred spirits. 

The climate of Ireland was favorable for a short 
time to her health, which, however, after a few 
months, again became seriously impaired. The 
burdens of life had been too heavy for her delicate 
constitution. The grief caused by her husband's 
alienation and the death of her mother had slowly 
but surely dried up the sources of her energy. She 
had been stimulated to overtask both her physical 
and mental powers by the pecuniary necessities of 
•her situation, having too often forced herself to work 
on her poems when nature required her to rest. 
She was now called on to pay the cost of all this 
in nervous prostrations and in painful weaknesses, 
which led her to write, "It is with me as if I felt, 
and more particularly heard, every thing with un- 
sheathed nerves. There is this line in Coleridge : 
' O ! for a sleep for sleep itself to rest in !' 



188 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

I believe I shall require some such quintessence of 
repose to restore me." 

She was favored, however, at times with tem- 
porary returns of her former vigor, sufficient to 
allow of excursions to visit some of the most charm- 
ing scenery of Ireland. She was able also in 1834 
to superintend the publication of her "Hymns for 
Childhood" (which had appeared in America in 
1827, but not in England), of "The National 
Lyrics" in a collected form, and of " Scenes and 
Hymns of Life." This latter volume a friendly 
critic in the Atheneum pronounced " her best work " 
and the opening of " a noble path." After reading 
this last remark she wrote : " My heart is growing 
faint. Shall I have power given me to tread that 
way much farther?" 

This misgiving of her heart was prophetic. 
Her life-work was almost finished. Yet her active 
mind was still busy with literary projects which 
were never fulfilled. An attack of scarlet fever, 
which seized her when away from home, greatly 
reduced her strength. Next came the wasting de- 
cay of a malarial fever, then dropsy, followed by 
that gradual decay of her physical powers which is 
often nature's preparation for the coming of the 
death-angel. 



FELICIA REMANS. 189 

In this exhausted state she was not uncomforted. 
She often said to Anna Creer, her faithful attendant, 
" I feel like a tired child — wearied and longing to 
be with the pure in heart." 

At another time she said : " I feel as if I were 
sitting with Mary at the feet of my Redeemer, 
hearing the music of his voice and learning of him 
to be meek and lowly. ... I am like a quiet 
babe at his feet, and yet my spirit is full of his 
strength. When any body speaks of his love to me, 
I feel as if he was too slow; my spirit can mount 
alone with him into those blissful realms with far 
greater rapidity!" 

The poetic spirit and power remained with her 
to the last, as she showed when a Sabbath or two 
before she " fell asleep," she dictated this Sabbath 
sonnet : 

u How many blessed groups this hour are bending, 

Through England's primrose meadow-paths, their way 

Toward spire and tower, 'midst shadowy elms ascending, 
Whence the sweet chimes proclaim the hallowed day ! 
The halls, from old heroic ages gray, 

Pour their fair children forth ; and hamlets low, 

With whose thick orchard blooms the soft winds play, 

Send out their inmates in a happy flow, 

Like a freed vernal stream ; I may not tread 
With them those pathways — to the feverish bed 



190 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

Of sickness bound. Yet O, my God ! I bless 
Thy mercy, that with Sabbath peace hath filled 
My chastened heart, and all its throbbings stilled 

To one deep calm of lowliest thankfulness." 

In this deep calm of a heart resting in the arms 
of the Father's everlasting love, our sweet singer, on 
the 16th of May, 1835, passed painlessly from the 
troubled life of earth to that life which is everlast- 
ing love and perfect rest. 

Mrs. Hemans can not be ranked with poets of 
the highest class, but she stands among the first of 
England's minor poets. Her poetry is what Miss 
Jewsbury said Mrs. Hemans was in her woman- 
hood, " exquisitely feminine." It is not abstractly in- 
tellectual, neither is it superficial. Its characteristic 
is the beautiful in history, scenery, character, and 
religion. It is, as Jeffrey said of it, "singularly 
sweet, elegant, and tender — touching, perhaps, and 
contemplative, rather than vehement and overpow- 
ering." It is, in brief, just such poetry as young 
ladies need to study, not for its pure thoughts alone, 
but also for its fitness to form the taste, furnish the 
imagination with images of the beautiful, fill the 
mind with lofty sentiments afford them innocent 
pleasure, and to kindle affection for " the right, the 
beautiful, and the true." 



^I'lillUllllllilllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllH 

mmmmmmmmm 

lilllllllllliiliiliiilllllilliilllillllllllllM^ 



¥111. 



" Is there nothing, 

Nothing, ray father, in the work of freedom 

For woman's hands to do ?' ' 

— Sydney Yendys. 



^NE November evening in 1837 there was 
not a little stir among the quiet citizens of 
the ancient village of Hingham, Massachu- 
setts, because of a lecture to be given by a 
lady in the Unitarian Church, of which Mr. Brooks 
was then the pastor. The reputation of the lec- 
turer, the novelty of a public address to a mixed 
audience from the lips of a woman, the exciting 
topic — slavery — had raised the feelings of the in- 
habitants to fever heat. The friends and foes of 
the anti-slavery movement were alike moved by 
curiosity to hear a woman speaker, and despite the 

prejudice of many against the cause, and of most 

191 



192 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

against what then appeared to be an unseemly- 
thing for a lady to attempt, the spacious edifice 
was crowded at the appointed hour. Probably a 
large majority of that audience was predisposed to 
judge the expected orator unfavorably. 

But that predisposition was wonderfully modified 
by the lady's appearance even before she uttered a 
word. Her tall, graceful figure, clad in Quaker- 
like garments, her dignified though modest bearing, 
her finely formed head, sharply chiseled features, 
beautiful complexion, and clear blue eyes at once 
disarmed many minds of resentful prejudice. And 
when she began to speak, her faultless modesty of 
manner, her intense feeling, her evident mastery of 
her theme, her intellectual strength, her grand 
appeals, and at times her almost Websterian elo- 
quence, captured, if not the convictions, yet the 
sympathies of her audience. When Miss Angelina 
Gmmke, for that was her name, sank back at the 
close of her oration, for such it was, exhausted 
by her effort, upon the sofa on the pulpit platform, 
she had not only won a goodly number to the cause 
she advocated, but had also dissolved the prejudices 
of many against the fitness of, at least, some women 
to speak in public. " If," said one of her hearers 
that evening, " every woman were as accomplished, 



THE MISSES GRIMKA 193 

and as qualified in mind and manners as Angelina 
Grimke, I should not object to her public advocacy 
of such questions as the moral aspects of slavery; 
but then, there are very few women who have her 
qualifications for such work." And this probably 
expressed the opinion of the majority present at her 
lecture, on the still " vexed question " of woman's 
relation to public speaking. 

Nearly fifty years have passed since Miss An- 
gelina gave that lecture in Hingham. At that time 
her name, with that of her elder sister, Sarah, was 
a household word, especially in the Northern States. 
It is but little known to the young ladies of to-day, 
albeit a biography of both sisters has recently been 
given to the public* The lives of these remark- 
able women have lessons for the young women of 
to-day, and for this reason the writer presents this 
brief sketch of their careers and characters. 

The Grimke sisters were natives of Charleston, 
South Carolina. Their father was the Hon. John 
F. Grimke, who came of good Huguenot stock, and 
was a judge of the Supreme Court of South Caro- 



* " The Grimke Sisters : Sarah and Angelina Grimke. The 
first American Women Advocates of Abolition and Woman's 
Rights." By Catherine C. Birney. The writer is indebted 
to this very entertaining volume for much of his materials 
for this sketch. 

17 



194 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

lina. Their mother could claim a highly respect- 
able Puritan ancestry. Fourteen sons and daughters 
were born to them, of whom Sarah was the sixth, 
and Angelina the youngest. They were High 
Church Episcopalians. Their home was an abode 
of wealth and luxury ; their social relations were 
of the most aristocratic type, and their numerous 
children were reared in the prevailing habits of 
what was regarded as the best society in Charleston. 
The sons were educated for professional life, but 
following the prevailing customs, the daughters 
were not taught solid learning, but only those orna- 
mental branches which were requisite to their rep- 
utation in society as accomplished and fashionable 
women. There certainly was nothing, either in 
their education or surroundings, to beget in them 
that spirit of self-sacrificing philanthrophy which was 
the distinguishing feature of their womanhood. 
Least of all was there any thing to suggest their 
future emnity to the peculiar institution, inasmuch 
as their father was a slaveholder, they were served 
by slaves from their earliest infancy, and were never 
taught to think there was any taint of sin in claim- 
ing and using human beings as property, or, to 
cite the words of South Carolina law, as " chattels 
personal." 



THE MISSES GRIMKfi. 195 

Their Huguenot and Puritan blood, however, 
revealed itself in their early tendency to think and 
decide for themselves, in their keen sense of natural 
justice, in their courageous love of truth, and in 
their tender sympathies with the oppressed. Sarah 
exhibited her independence by protesting against 
the superficial studies assigned her, and begging 
permission to study the classics and the law as her 
brothers did. But custom forbade this, and she 
was forced to be content with such instructions 
as were usually given young ladies of fashion. But 
neither their imperfect education, nor corrupt pub- 
lic opinion, could prevent the revolt of their tender 
feelings against the punishments commonly inflicted 
upon slaves, and also against the utter ignorance in 
which those poor creatures were designedly reared. 

Catherine Birney tells us that Sarah, when only 
five years old, after seeing a slave woman cruelly 
whipped, sobbed as if heart-broken, and then ran 
from her nurse to the wharf and begged the cap- 
tain of a vessel to take her from a city in which the 
whipping of women was permitted. The same ten- 
derness of heart was shown by Angelina, who, on 
one occasion, stole out to the slave quarters with a 
bottle of oil with which to soothe the wounds of 
one of her father's slaves who had been whipped 



196 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

that day. Thus the natural tenderness of both 
girls caused them to hate slavery long before 
their moral judgments had taught them the sinful- 
ness of slaveholding. It was the germ of their 
subsequent devotion to the cause of human freedom. 
Never, perhaps, were two sisters more closely 
bound to each other by sympathy and affection 
than were these Grimke sisters. Their strong and 
life-long sisterly love had its origin in somewhat 
exceptional circumstances. Sarah was twelve years 
old when Angelina was born. The presence of her 
baby-sister begot in her girlish heart a tenderness 
akin to that of a mother for her child. She begged 
to be permitted to stand at the baptismal font as 
godmother to the infant. This strange request, 
after many refusals, was finally granted, and this 
girl of twelve gave the promise required by the 
Episcopalian ritual, to train her infant sister in the 
ways of Christian duty. This promise, usually 
made without serious thought or purpose, had so 
much meaning for the juvenile godmother, that she 
carried it to God, with tears and prayers, asking fit- 
ness for the duty she had engaged to perform. Years 
after she wrote of her feelings at the time, saying : 
" O, how good I resolved to be, how careful in all 
my conduct, that my life might be blessed to her." 



THE MISSES GRIMKfi. 197 

And it was ; for never was sister-love more true, 
devoted, and lasting than in Sarah Grirake. And 
never was it more warmly reciprocated than by 
Angelina. 

The home of these sisters, though affluent, and 
refined by culture, was nevertheless not a happy 
one. Their mother seems to have been unequal to 
the management of a large household in which the 
service was all performed by slaves. Hence came 
waste, disorder, irritation of temper, and chronic 
discontent. In Sarah's case, as she passed from 
girlhood into young womanhood, there was added 
the unrest of an unusually active and mature mind 
refused, in obedience to prevailing custom, the priv- 
lege of instruction in that solid learning for which 
she hungered. Her parents wished to make her, 
not a student, but a young lady of fashion ; a draw- 
ing-room doll ; a belle in the ball-room ; a merry 
participant in the frivolous amusements of aristo- 
cratic society. She Avished to be a scholar, and 
could not be satisfied with what the fashionable 
world offered her starving intellect. 

To this hunger of the mind there was added in 
her seventeenth year the hunger of the heart. As 
stated above, her parents were Episcopalians, but 
do not appear to have been much more than devo- 



198 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

tees to forms and ceremonies. Moreover, their con- 
struction of the Church creed was highly Calvin- 
istic, and therefore narrow and unsatisfying. Sarah 
attended all the services and sacraments of the Epis- 
copal Church, but was, as she wrote, insensible to 
spiritual feeling. Going one evening to a Presby- 
terian church, the words of the eloquent Rev. H. 
Kolloch were sharp arrows to her wounded heart, 
but did not win her from "scenes of dissipation 
and frivolity," in which she stifled the emotions she 
could not wholly suppress. A conversation with this 
devout minister, whom she met while away from 
home a year or two later, revived her convictions. 
Her father's long illness, during which she was his 
most faithful nurse, and his death, which was made 
peaceful by his late-born faith in Christ, intensified 
her desires for a manifestation of Christ to her 
almost despairing spirit. In Catherine Birney's 
interesting work the struggles of her strong mind 
with the comfortless dogmas of an unscriptural 
theology, and with the unsatisfactory conditions of 
her life, are given with considerable fullness. In 
these conflicts we see her turning, first to Univer- 
salism, which yielded no balm to her wounded 
spirit; then, while on a visit to North Carolina 
seeking to recover her health, which had given way 



THE MISSES GRMKE. 199 

beneath the burden of her anguished mind, to 
Methodism, in which she found partial consolation, 
but did not fully accept, because its doctrines were 
not in harmony with the religious theories which 
had so confused her mind as to mislead her judg- 
ment. At last, influenced by a book presented 
to her by a Quaker, she accepted the theories of 
the Friends, and found as she vainly hoped, "a 
resting-place for her weary, sore-travailed spirit." 

The mystic feature in Quakerism seems to have 
been the star of this false hope. Its doctrine of 
the "inward light," of God speaking directly to the 
heart, had a charm for her strong but misdirected 
mind. The beliefs in which she had been reared 
had given an interpretation to the Scriptures from 
which her sense of justice so revolted that she 
could not readily accept them as her guide. Her 
acquaintance with the doctrines of Methodism was 
too superficial and partial to replace her erro- 
neous impressions. But by the fancied inner light 
of Quakerism she could read into Holy Writ such 
conceptions as her imagination suggested. Had 
she been more wisely taught in early life, had she 
grasped the fundamental truths of the Gospel, her 
ardent mind would have been satisfied to take the 
plain meaning of the Written Word as a sufficient 



200 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

guide to duty, and thereby have escaped much suf- 
fering, and avoided the mistakes into which she 
was led by confounding the voice of her own heart 
with the voice of God. The Divine Spirit illumi- 
nates the mind and comforts the soul, but it speaks 
no word to the understanding other than what is to 
be found in the Holy Book. 

Sarah's fancied inner life soon moved her to 
see visions, to commune with spirits, and to be- 
lieve that it was her duty to be a minister among 
the Quakers. Those imaginary visions and spirits 
troubled her exceedingly, but not nearly so much 
as her supposed call to the ministry. From this 
call she shrank as from a threat of torture. Her 
sensitive modesty, her sense of womanly propriety, 
and the prejudices of her education, made it seem 
a crushing burden. Yet she resolved to begin the 
work at the Friends' meeting-house; but when the 
opportunity was within her reach, her tongue, par- 
alyzed by fear, refused to speak. Again and again 
her resolution yielded to nervous timidity. She 
sat silent and wretched, for her imaginary inner 
light accused her of sinning against the Holy Ghost, 
and this false accusation haunted her like a ghost 
through several years — a sincere but unhappy vic- 
tim of erroneous teaching! 



THE MISSES GRIMK&. 201 

Thus tempest-tossed by false impressions, made 
uncomfortable by the censures of family friends, 
who frowned upon her eccentricities, and panting 
for the sympathy of congenial minds, Sarah easily 
persuaded herself that the Lord required her to 
quit the home of her childhood and remove to 
Philadelphia. Hence in 1821 we find her domiciled 
at the house of a Friend, named Israel Morris, in 
the "City of Brotherly Love." 

But what was the history of Angelina during 
these years? Lovingly nursed in infancy, petted 
in childhood, trained in early youth by her sister 
god-mother, Angelina very naturally imbibed 
her opinions and shared her feelings; albeit she was 
not so pliable as to accept the views even of her 
beloved sister, or of her Calvinistic mother, without 
seeing what seemed to be sufficient grounds for 
doing so. She was beautiful, gay, fashionable, yet 
respectful of religious forms. In disposition she 
was more cheerful, and in judgment more independ- 
ent than her sister. Like Sarah she had "starved 
on the cold water of Episcopacy," and was con- 
vinced of sin under the preaching of a Presbyterian 
minister. Unlike Sarah, she had speedily found 
peace in believing, and her conceptions of the Gos- 
pel were such as filled her with joy in the Holy 



202 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

Ghost. She was less self-reproachful, but more 
self-reliant, more self-assertive, and of more com- 
manding presence than her sister. Yet she was 
like her, in that she did not remain long at rest 
with regard to the doctrines of the Presbyterian 
Church, under whose instructions she had found 
peace. 

In 1827 the morbidly conscientious Sarah revis- 
ited Charleston, drawn hither partly because of her 
yearning desire to commune with her mother, her 
"precious Angelina," and her other sisters, and 
partly because she was fighting against an aifection 
she had formed for a young Quaker who was desir- 
ous of making her his bride. The dear, mistaken 
girl was trying to persuade herself that it was her 
duty to crucify that natural, healthful, and inno- 
cent passion. She hoped that absence might dis- 
solve the charm of love. She was never married. 

During Sarah's stay in Charleston she communi- 
cated a very decided impulse to Angelina's mind 
toward Quakerism. Its mystic theory of the inner 
light captured the younger, as it had the elder sister. 
Its effect was soon seen in Angelina's abandonment 
of Presbyterian worship, of ornamental dress, of 
the family worship, and of all reading except of 
strictly religious books, and in her at least partial 



THE MISSES GRIMKE. 203 

surrender to what she fancied was the guidance of 
the inner light. 

The result of all this was, as might be expected, 
that she gave great offense to her family, to the 
Church, and to the fashionable circle in which it 
had been her wont to shine. She was censured by 
her relatives, and ridiculed by society, as a very 
eccentric young lady, especially because she per- 
sisted in going to the little Quaker meeting-house, 
to sit in silence with the two elderly men who were 
its only attendants besides herself. This treatment, 
though it did not subdue her strong will, wounded 
her pride and stung her unbending spirit. After 
Sarah's return to Philadelphia she had no one to 
comfort her with sympathy, and the irritations of 
her mind produced such physical prostration that 
in 1828 she, too, went to Philadelphia to recruit 
her strength. 

This visit had an important bearing on Ange- 
lina's destined work. Three months' companion- 
ship with her sister and her Quaker associates so 
strengthened her adhesion to their notions that she 
adopted the style of dress peculiar to that sect. Her 
consciousness of a call to be one of its ministers 
became more distinct. She also heard so much said 
on the slavery question, then strongly agitated in 



204 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

the North, that her dislike of slave-holding, already 
very deep, was greatly intensified. Hence, on her 
return to Charleston she was more than ever pro- 
nounced in her Quaker peculiarities, in her rebukes 
of the ostentatious luxuries of her mother's house, 
and of the treatment of the family slaves. So much 
did she dwell upon the cruelties of the slave system, 
that her hatred of it became a passion. She wept at 
what she saw daily in her native city, and her swell- 
ing heart heaved with desire to be "the means of 
exposing the cruelty and injustice which was prac- 
ticed in that institution of oppression; . . above all, 
of exposing the awful sin of professors of religion 
sending their slaves to the house of correction, and 
having them whipped, so that when they come out 
they can scarcely walk, or having them put upon the 
tread-mill until they are lamed for days afterwards." 
Such thoughts and desires were the roots on 
which her subsequent labors in the anti-slavery 
crusade grew. They were burning thoughts, and 
became so unendurable that she could not willingly 
remain in a city where the spectacles which met her 
eyes almost daily, were as fuel to the torture they 
caused in her indignant soul. Moreover, the truth, 
hitherto unperceived, that slave-holding was sinful, 
began to dawn upon her, and she wrote in her 



THE UISSE8 GR1MK& 205 

diary, "May it not be laid down as an axiom, that 
that system must be radically wrong which can only 
be supported by transgressing the laws of* God?" 

This perception which a false early education 
had heretofore kept hidden from her moral judg- 
ment, stimulated her to deeper and more painful 
feelings, and moved her to speak with boldness, not 
only to her relatives, but also to visitors. Such 
courageous expression of opinion in a city which 
regarded censure of slave-holding as little less than 
treason against the .State, made her position less and 
less tolerable; and, therefore, in 1^29, she forsook 
her native city and the home of her childhood, and 
joined her beloved Sarah in Philadelphia, where 

could hope to enjoy liberty of speech, and I 
without being compelled to witness those acts of 
cruelty which had vexed her righteous soul. 

The sisters now richly enjoyed each other's 
raging actively in works of charity, 
found abundant congenial occupation. Still fi 
did not find Quakerism to be thai rest of 

mental repose which their free souls had expected. 
They had thought to find full liberty in it to o 

.e of their invisible guide. Ti. 1 it 

to be a system of restraint, under which the will 
of the elder .Tactically superior to that v. 



206 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

in the unofficial individual. They supposed that 
among the Friends gentleness and love excluded 
harsh authority and ungenerous sentiments. They 
found no small measure of uncharitableness and 
severity in the treatment meted out to them, espe- 
cially to the more docile Sarah, whose aspirations 
as a minister were most unkindly checked, even so 
far that she was once openly commanded to be silent 
while in the act of speaking. But such was the 
strength of her adhesion to the sect, that Sarah 
would have borne such treatment unresistingly but 
for the more independent Angelina, whose bolder 
spirit resented every encroachment on her liberty 
of thought and action. Both sisters were loyal to 
the principles of the Society, but they practically 
dissented from some of the details imposed by the 
elders on its members. Angelina, despite their 
requirements, would read papers and books not 
approved by them. She would attend other than 
Quaker assemblies. Hence, after a short time, she 
began to grow away from strict Quakerism, and 
gradually influenced Sarah in the same direction. 
Quakerism was too narrow for a woman possessing 
such activity and strength of mind, such marked 
individuality, and such large desires to achieve 
something for humanity as belonged to Angelina. 



THE MISSES GB1MK& 207 

In the exercise of her self-asserted liberty of 
action, Angelina, disregarding the advice of the 
elder Friends, went, in 1835, to hear that eloquent 
philanthropist, George Thompson, and other anti- 
slavery orators. Their words fell upon her long- 
cherished humane sympathies like sparks on dry 
tinder, and kindled her desire to do what she could 
to promote the then despised movements in behalf 
of crushed humanity in the Southern States. 
She knew that to identify herself openly with the 
then unpopular anti-slavery agitation would offend 
her Quaker friends, grieve her beloved sister, and 
exasperate her relatives in the South. In presence 
of these certain consequences she hesitated, prayed, 
and pondered long and deeply, saying in her heart, 
"What shall I do? what shall I do?" 

At last, in August, 1835, an appeal to the cit- 
izens of Boston, from the fiery pen of William Lloyd 
Garrison, protesting against the mobs which dis- 
turbed the meetings in which George Thompson 
was the chief orator, inspired her to write Mr. 
Garrison a letter of sympathy. This letter was a 
strong and eloquent production. It was as the 
voice of a grandly heroic soul. It declared eman- 
cipation to be "a cause worth dying for." Its 
tone delighted Mr. Garrison, who printed it with 



208 ■ SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

approving comments in the Liberator, in which he 
called special attention to Angelina's high Southern 
connections, and the opportunities her early life 
had afforded her for studying the institution she 
condemned. 

The publication of her letter was a surprise to 
Angelina, and it brought down a storm of disap- 
proval upon her head from all sides. She met this 
storm with the courage she had displayed in her 
letter. Only her sister's grief disturbed her affec- 
tionate spirit. Sarah, though hostile to the cru- 
elties of slavery from her childhood, was not yet 
sufficiently alive to its sinfulness to join a crusade 
for its destruction. She even fancied that her more 
energetic sister was " given over to blindness of 
mind," and did not know "light from darkness, 
right from wrong." But Angelina had no doubt 
about the path she had entered being the right one. 
"With her the only question was as to whither it led; 
what specific part heaven wished her to take in the 
grand anti-slavery drama ! 

The story of her mental perplexities is well told 
by Catherine Birney. These continued several 
months, until one morning she entered the break- 
fast-room of Mrs. Parker, with whom she was then 
visiting, in Shrewsbury, New Jersey, her face 



THE MISSES GRIMKE. 209 

beaming with the brightness of a mind relieved from 
doubt, as she exclaimed : 

"It has all come to me. God has shown me 
what I can do. I can write an appeal to Southern 
women. ... I will speak to them in such tones 
that they must hear me, and through me the voice 
of justice and humanity." 

With the promptitude of a lofty enthusiasm born 
of genuine conviction, she began her proposed task 
at once. After writing a few pages she received a let- 
ter from the Secretary of the American Anti-slavery 
Society, inviting her to New York, to meet with 
Christian women in private parlors, and talk to 
them on slavery. 

This invitation was a flash of brighter light 
upon the hitherto misty path she had entered. Yet 
it startled her. Though impressed long before that 
she was called to be a minister among the Friends, 
yet she had not hitherto addressed any such public 
assembly as she was now invited to do. She hesi- 
tated, delayed her reply, wrote to Sarah for counsel, 
prayed for divine direction, and held the question 
in abeyance until she finished her appeal. 

When it was prepared she sent her manuscript 
to the Anti-slavery Society in New 5Tork. Its 

adaptation to its purpose, its eloquence, .the felicity 

18 



210 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

of its style, the fervor of its tone, its telling facts, and 
the strength of its indictment against the peculiar 
institution, impressed the committee so deeply that 
they at once put it to press, and speedily sent it 
broadcast over the country. It produced " the most 
profound sensation wherever it was read," Catherine 
Birney justly remarks. In Charleston it was pub- 
licly burned; and when it- was rumored that its 
author was about to visit her mother, the police 
were instructed to prevent her landing. The mayor 
also told her mother that if she came hither it 
would be impossible for him to protect her from 
the violence of a mob. O, chivalric Carolinians! 
Angelina would have defied mob violence and gone 
to Charleston, but unwilling to put her family 
in peril, she wisely refrained from making her 
intended visit. 

The Friends in Philadelphia, who were then 
hostile to the anti-slavery movement, were deeply 
offended with Angelina for giving this heart-stirring 
pamphlet to the world. Sarah, though grieved be- 
cause of its injury to her sister's influence in the 
Society, was, nevertheless, not offended. She was, 
in "fact, gradually growing into Angelina's spirit. 
The Friends themselves promoted that growth by 
their arbitrary treatment of both sisters. And 



THE MISSES GRIME A 211 

when, after proposing to go to New England, to 
speak among Friends only upon the duty of using 
none but goods produced by free labor, and being 
advised not to go thither, Angelina decided to accept 
the invitation of the New York Committee. Sarah 
resolved to accompany her, saying, "We have wept 
and prayed together; we will go and work together." 
As their purpose was not likely to be approved by 
the Society, it practically severed the sisters from 
their obligation to observe their rules. The attempt 
" to ingraft these scions of the Charleston aristoc- 
racy upon the rugged stock of Quaker orthodoxy," 
as Miss Birney observes, proved to be futile. 

Our noble pair of sisters, isolated from their 
Quaker friends, soon found themselves in friendly 
relation with men and women of broader minds, 
higher culture, and more generous sympathies. 
With characteristic independence they refused the 
offer of salaries, and proposed to pay their own ex- 
penses, as they were able to do, they having each 
inherited the sum of ten thousand dollars from their 
father's estate, the interest of which sums was suffi- 
cient to cover the cost of their simple modes of 
dress and plain manner of living. 

Before beginning their proposed work in New 
York, the sisters attended an anti-slavery conven- 



212 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

tion in that city, at which the eloquent Theodore 
D. Weld took a very prominent part. To both 
sisters it was a rich and profitable occasion. To 
Sarah it proved such a. stimulant, that she at once 
wrote an " Epistle to the Clergy of the Southern 
States," which, when published, was accepted as a 
very effective argument against the theories of cleri- 
cal apologists for slave-holding. Being freed from the 
repressive spirit of Quakerism, the true heart of that 
excellent woman moved her to cast the full weight 
of her really great ability into freedom's scale. 

After the convention the Female Anti-slavery 
Society held its first quarterly-meeting in New York, 
for the purpose of listening to the two sisters. 
Their purpose had been to speak only in parlors, 
but their presence in the convention had produced 
so favorable an impression that it was obvious no 
parlor would hold the numbers sure to attend. 
Therefore the session- room of a Baptist church 
was announced as the place of meeting. It was not 
only a novelty, but an objectionable act, in those 
days for a woman to speak in a public place, even 
to an assembly of women. The Quakers in New 
York were shocked by the announcement, and not 
a few Abolitionists thought it scarcely a proper 
thing to encourage. Rumors of these hostile views 



THE MISSES GRIMK& 213 

reached the ears of the shrinking sisters, and they 
trembled at being called "two bold Southern 
women." But prayer and the sympathy of good 
men encouraged them to go to the session-room. 
There they found some three hundred women. 
Prayer was offered by a Mr. Ludlow y a few words 
of welcome were given them by Mr. Dunbar, the 
pastor of the church; and then, the two gentlemen 
having modestly retired, Angelina spoke with good 
effect for forty minutes without the least embarrass- 
ment. Sarah followed with impressive remarks. 
The ladies present requested that another meeting 
should be held. Thus these two heroic sisters 
crossed the Rubicon of an adverse public opinion, 
and began that brief but brilliant career of public 
speaking, by which they doubtless contributed very 
materially to the diffusion of correct information 
concerning slavery as it actually was, and to the 
progress of the great anti-slavery movement in 
the North. 

In these days of our familiarity with the fact of 
women addressing large audiences of both men and 
women on questions of religion and reform, one is 
amused when told that at this first appearance of 
the Misses Grimke before an assembly of ladies, a 
curious but friendly gentleman having quietly crept 



214 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

into the sessions-room was, when discovered, re- 
quested to withdraw. No wonder, when Theo- 
dore D. Weld was told this ludicrous incident, that 
he exclaimed, "How supremely ridiculous, to think 
of a man being shouldered out of a meeting for 
fear he should hear a woman speak!" 

The dignified manners and tender eloquence of 
these good women struck a chord of sympathy in 
the hearts of many ladies, who, as the fame of the 
fair Carolinians spread, crowded to hear them in 
such numbers that it became necessary to hold their 
meetings in the church. After addressing numer- 
ous assemblies in New York, the sisters visited 
several towns in New Jersey, where they were 
equally well received ; as they were also in the 
cities of Hudson and Poughkeepsie, on the North 
River. Then their oratorical fame spread far and 
wide. Invitations poured in upon them from many 
quarters. Boston anti-slavery women called for 
their presence and labors. They obeyed this sum- 
mons, spoke in many places, and always created 
convictions and stimulated rational enthusiasm for 
the cause of liberty in their hearers. At first they 
spoke to females only, but as their reputation spread 
a few gentlemen began to steal into their meetings 
uninvited; yet being tolerated their numbers grew, 



THE MISSES GRIMKfi. 215 

until, in July, 1837, the sisters spoke in Lynn, 
Massachusetts, to a mixed audience of at least a 
thousand persons. The gentlemen then present 
were so astonished and delighted with their pow- 
erful oratory that they insisted on hearing them 
again. At their next address the edifice was 
overcrowded. 

Their success as speakers to mixed assemblies 
roused opposition. The enemies of the emancipa- 
tion movement, clergymen who felt that it was an 
innovation not to be tolerated for women to speak 
to promiscuous gatherings, and even many true- 
hearted anti-slavery men, were offended. The ene- 
mies of the cause spoke and wrote wrathfully, while 
not a few of its friends were grieved. For a time 
a storm raged round the heads of these devoted 
ladies. But their sense of duty held them to their 
work. As fast as the doubting friends of the cause 
heard them they were won to their side, being dis- 
armed of prejudice by that perfect propriety of 
manner and speech which gave character to their 
performances, albeit many of them were not con- 
vinced of either the wisdom or fitness of much that 
was said and done at that time by the agitation 
which grew out of their action on the vexed ques- 
tion of so-called "Woman's Rights." The Misses 



216 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

Grimke were ladies of lofty character, gifted with 
extraordinary endowments, and could usefully do a 
work which if attempted by women of inferior char- 
acters and abilities would neither elevate the sex 
nor promote any - good cause. Since the world 
began God has anointed a succession of prophets, 
but only now and then has he called a woman to 
be prophetess. 

It is highly creditable to the judgment of these 
sisters that, although misled for a brief season by 
the persuasions of William L. Garrison, H. C.Wright, 
and a few others, and inclined to force their pet 
notions on woman's rights, non-resistance, no-gov- 
ernment, etc., on the anti-slavery cause, they soon 
yielded to the arguments of Whittier, T. D. Weld, 
H. B. Stanton, and other judicious counselors, and 
ceased their efforts in that direction. For this they 
were unsparingly censured by Garrison and those 
who idolized him. Of this treatment Sarah wrote: 
"They were exhibiting in the high places of moral 
reform the genuine spirit of slave-holding." Of 
Garrison she writes very justly: "His spirit of 
intolerance toward those who did not draw in his 
traces, and his adulation of those who surrendered 
themselves to his guidance, have always been very 
repulsive to me." In this opinion Miss Grimke 



THE MISSES GRIMKA 217 

was doubtless right. In his treatment of opponents 
Garrison thought he was acting on principle; but, 
unconsciously, perhaps, he was too despotic to "let 
others be themselves. " 

The public labors of the Grimke sisters culmi- 
nated in Boston, in* 1838, when Angelina spoke 
twice in the halls of the Massachusetts Legislature 
before a committee of that body, appointed to con- 
sider the "petitions on the subject of slavery." As 
she stood in the place of the speaker of the House, 
in presence of a vast crowd which more than filled 
the hall, her heart which, as she wrote, " had never 
quailed before, almost died within her at that tre- 
mendous hour." "The best culture and character," 
said Wendell Phillips, "was there; and the profound 
impression then made on a class not often found 
in anti-slavery meetings, was never wholly lost. . . 
The converts she made needed no after-training. 
When she was opening some secret record of her 
own experience, the painful silence and breathless 
interest told the deep effect and lasting impression 
her words were making." 

After speaking twice before that committee, the 
sisters appeared in the Odeon, where Sarah lectured 
once, and Angeliua five times, to audiences of per- 
haps two thousand souls, whose frequent bursts of 

19 



218 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

applause illustrated the marvelous power of these 
eloquent daughters of South Carolina. With her 
lecture in the Odeon Sarah's public labors ended, 
her throat being so seriously diseased as to compel 
retirement and rest. Angelina spoke but once more. 
A few weeks later she was married in Philadelphia 
to Theodore D. Weld. Invited to speak in Penn- 
sylvania Hall, then just dedicated, but at the mo- 
ment threatened by a furious mob, she appeared 
there, "the bride of three days," says Catherine 
Birney; "and so great was the effect of her pure, 
beautiful presence, and quiet, graceful manner, that 
in a few moments the confusion within the hall 
subsided." Yet during her burning speech the mob 
within the doors yelled and shouted, while the mob 
without hurled showers of stones through the win- 
dows across the hall. Nothing daunted, without 
the slightest change of color, she spoke on for an 
hour, and when she had finished the applause of the 
audience drowned the yells of the mob. This was 
her last speech, her nervous system being so im- 
paired by an accident shortly after, that she was 
never again competent to endure the excitement 
and exertion of public speaking. Henceforth she 
was able to serve the cause she loved so truly only 
with her able, fervid pen. 



THE MISSES GRIMK& 219 

The scope of this sketch forbids us to attempt 
any description of the simple, busy, self-denying, 
self-sacrificing, unique, beautiful, and happy lives 
these loving sisters and Mr. Weld lived in their 
modest homes, first at Fort Lee, next at Belleville, 
then at Eagleswood, New Jersey, and finally at 
Hyde. Park, near Boston. The pleasing story is 
well told by Catherine Birney, in her exceedingly 
interesting book. It must suffice here to say that 
Miss Grimke died December 23, 1873, at Hyde 
Park, and Mrs. Weld followed her to the mansions 
of rest October 26th, 1879. They were both rarely 
good women, alike in many of their idiosyncrasies, 
yet unlike in others. Both suffered through lack 
of educational training suited to their naturally 
strong, active, resolute, impulsive minds. Perhaps 
the uncertainties, changes, and final peculiarities of 
their religious beliefs had their origin chiefly in 
this lack. Both were charitable and self-sacrificing 
to the last degree. Both possessed a strong sense 
of justice, an uncommonly acute conscientiousness, 
and a courage that was fearless of the consequences 
of doing right. Of the two, Angelina had the 
quicker perception; but in reasoning both were apt 
to seize on generalizations too broad for the facts 
on which they were based. Both were somewhat 



220 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

eccentric. Both had great strength of will, but An- 
gelina's character was the stronger of the two, the 
more prompt to decide, the more forward to act, 
the more magnetic in its action upon other minds. 
Both were good, pure, noble, honorable women, not 
faultless, yet in many things models for the imita- 
tion of the young women of to day. 




IlllllllllUllllllllllllllllllllllllilllllllllllllllll 

fTjililllillllliliiilllililllllliilillllJllllJJIllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll^ 



oerpolirje. Qucpcfi®: Herscrjel. 



1 The wise and active conquer difficulties 
By daring to attempt them. Sloth and folly 
Shiver and shrink at sight of toil and hazard, 
And make the impossibility they fear.» — Rowe. 

[pN the month of January, 1848, the body of a 
Tfs^ lady who had lived to be nearly ninety-eight 
years old was borne into the grave-yard, at 
Hanover, Germany, followed by a long pro- 
cession of mourners. Royal carriages were there, as 
evidences that the court honored the memory of the 
dead. Garlands of laurel, cypress, and palm branches, 
sent by the crown princess from Herrnhauseu, 
covering her coffin, showed that she, too, shared 
in the affectionate regard of the reigning monarch 
for the deceased lady. The following inscription, 
written by the departed lady shortly before her 

death, and subsequently placed over her grave, 
221 



222 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

shall inform the reader who she was, and to what 
her long life had been devoted : 

" Here rests the earthly exterior of Caroline Lucretia 
Herschel, born at Hanover, March 16, 1750, died January 
9, 1848. The eyes of her who is glorified were here below 
turned to the starry heavens. Her own discoveries of com- 
ets, and her participation in the immortal labors of her 
brother, William Herschel, bear witness of this to future 
ages. The Eoyal Irish Academy, of Dublin, and the Royal 
Astronomical Society, of London, enrolled her name among 
their members." 

The reputation of this lady was not the blos- 
soming of her own discoveries, though she was her- 
self a highly gifted astronomer, but of her marvelous 
sister-love. She had chosen so to merge her life 
into that of her brother as partly to justify what 
she said of herself in her old age, namely: "I am 
nothing. I have done nothing. All I am, all I 
know, I owe to my brother. I am only the tool 
which he shaped to his use; a well-trained puppy- 
dog would have done as much." 

Our sketch will show that she, doubtless, owed 
her musical and astronomical knowledge to her 
noble brother's teaching. It will also show that in 
calling herself his "tool," she was underrating her- 
self. Her love was moving her to exalt him at her 
own expense, for she was neither a passive tool nor 



CAROLINE LUCRE TLA HERSCHEL. 223 

a "well-trained puppy-dog," but a woman of rare 
genius, who was in strong intellectual sympathy 
with his pursuits, and whose marvelous sister-love 
moved her to subordinate her own ambitions to 
those of her brother; to find her pleasure, not in 
seeking celebrity for herself, but in contributing to 
his, and to rejoice in his successes as if they were 
her own. Could she but see him shine as a lumi- 
nary in the world of science, she was content to sit 
in the light of his reputation. For this rare degree 
of beautiful sisterly affection the world admired 
and still admires her, and will always rank her 
with such devoted sisters as Dorothy Wordsworth 
and Mary Lamb. 

The child-life of Caroline Herschel was not, on 
the whole, a happy one. Her father was a hautboy- 
player in the band of the Guards, and a skilled 
musician. Hence his family was subject to the 
vicissitudes of military life, and, during the "Seven 
Years' War," to serious discomforts growing out of 
the occupation of Hanover by the victorious French 
for nearly two years. These adversities of the king- 
dom often reduced the Herschel family- to great 
straits. Peace brought easier times. Caroline's 
two eldest brothers, by their early display of mu- 
sical talents, then found employment in the court 



224 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

orchestra, and thereby brought such good cheer 
into the home circle, that Caroline, writing of her 
early days, said : " It made me so happy to see 
them so happy" — a remark, by the way, which 
shows that Caroline was gifted in her childhood 
with that unselfish disposition which, in her ma- 
ture years, enabled her to find enjoyment in her 
brother's success. 

On one occasion, when Caroline's father and her 
brother William had arrived in Hanover with their 
regiment, from foreign service, her mother gave 
her permission to go to the parade to meet them. 
The day was cold, the streets crowded. The little 
girl, unable to find her friends, wandered about 
until she was very nearly frozen. At last, she re- 
turned to her home, where she found the family at 
dinner. So delighted were they over the return of 
the father and brother, that no one had noticed 
Caroline's absence. The first to greet her was 
William. "My dear brother William," she wrote 
in her " Early Kecollections," " threw down his 
knife and fork, ran to welcome me, and crouched 
down to me, which made me forget all my griev- 
ances." Even at that early age her love for her 
brother William was so strong that his smile was 
her childish heaven. 



CAROLINE LUCRETIA HERSCHEL. 225 

Caroline's girl-life was not spent in idle pastimes. 
She was at the military school every day until three 
o'clock. From her studies there she went to an- 
other school, to learn knitting. When she had 
acquired this simple art she was kept busy out of 
school hours knitting stockings for her brothers. 
Stockings so long that they reached from her chin 
to the floor! She was also made to wait at table 
when her exacting brother Jacob was at home. 
And he was so unkind as to give her "many a 
whipping for being awkward." Besides these em- 
ployments she wrote letters to the absent ones, 
for her mother and for the neighbors, and was, 
consequently, if not a family drudge, yet a very 
busy child. 

When she was ten years old her father left the 
army, broken down by the hardships of his soldier's 
life. He then became a teacher of music, and Car- 
oline was one of his most ready pupils, until a year 
later typhus fever so reduced her strength that, she 
writes, "for several months I was obliged to mount 
the stairs on my hands and feet like an infant." 

When Caroline's strength returned, her mother, 
much against the wish of her father, instead of 
keeping her at school, compelled her to drudge like 
a servant, both in the kitchen and with her needle. 



226 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

Not that she was opposed to education in itself, but 
because two of her sons being musically educated had 
been tempted to seek employment in England, and 
she feared that if Caroline became a superior scholar, 
she too might leave her natal home. This drudgery, 
with grief over the continued absence of her best- 
beloved brother, clothed the girl's spirits with 
gloom, which became "a kind of stupefaction " 
when her father died, as he did when she was 
seventeen years old. 

That Caroline might acquire sufficient skill to 
support herself, if need should arise, by her needle, 
Mrs. Herschel now sent her as an apprentice to a 
fashionable milliner and dress-maker, but resolutely 
refused to let her study French and music, as she 
wished to do, in order that she might qualify her- 
self to fill the place of a governess. In all this 
the mother was blameworthy. Out of a selfish 
desire to keep her daughter from going to England 
as two of her sons had done, she strove to repress 
the development of her mental powers. Happily 
the maiden's genius would not yield itself wholly 
to this unwise mother's measures. Knowing that 
it was her brother William's wish to have her with 
him in England, that he might train her to assist 
him in his concerts and musical pursuits, she, while 



CAROLINE LUCRETIA HERSCHEL. 227 

not refusing to perform her household tasks, did 
her utmost when her mother was from home to 
cultivate her voice for singing the solo parts of 
concert music. 

"When Caroline was twenty-two her brother 
William set her free from these restraints by settling 
an annuity upon her mother sufficient to pay the 
expense of a personal attendant to fill her place in 
the household; and then, with her mother's reluctant 
consent, taking her with him to England. Thus, 
despite her unmotherly efforts, the event Mrs. Her- 
schel dreaded as an evil came to pass, and her 
daughter fell into the place for which nature had 
fitted her. 

When Caroline arrived in England her brother's 
home was in Bath, its most fashionable watering- 
place. In that gay city he had acquired reputation 
as a teacher and composer of music. He was also 
the popular director of the public concerts, patron- 
ized by the royal and aristocratic visitors who spent 
the "season" there. But while music was his vis- 
ible profession, the real work of his life, the thing 
he pursued with passionate affection, was the study 
of the heavens. He was a music-master only that 
he might acquire means and have leisure to invent 
better astronomical instruments than any then in 



228 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

use. Dissatisfied with what astronomers already 
knew, he aimed to be an explorer among the stars, 
a discoverer of worlds hitherto unrevealed to the 
eyes of men. To achieve this worthy end, he was 
at this time secretly toiling to construct a more 
powerful telescope than the opticians of the past had 
been able to produce. He was beginning that long 
series of mechanical labors, of which "the mirror 
for the mighty forty-foot telescope was the crown- 
ing result." 

If Miss Herschel had dreamed of her brother's 
residence as a luxurious Castle of Indolence, her 
dream would have been swiftly dissolved on her 
arrival within its walls. But she probably had 
indulged in no such dreaming. Her mind was 
practical, and not poetical. Her early life, as we 
have seen, had been a life of drudging toil, but 
little brightened by recreation or the sympathies of 
demonstrative family affections. Most likely in 
going to Bath she thought of little else than of 
becoming the companion of the brother she most 
fondly loved, and of doing what might be in her 
power to contribute to his prosperity and happiness. 

It was well, both for herself and her brother, 
that she had this practical turn of mind. Had she 
been frivolous, self-indulgent, fond of admiration, a 



CAROLINE LUCRETIA HERSCHEL. 229 

lover of amusements, and dependent on society for 
the enjoyment of her daily life, she would have 
been an unhappy woman in her brother's busy 
home. But, looking on life as she did, with the 
eye of sound common sense, she accepted things as 
she found them, without complaining of their hard- 
ships. And they were hard in many respects. She 
had much, almost every thing, indeed, to learn. The 
second morning after her arrival her brother began 
giving her lessons in English, in arithmetic, and in 
keeping a book account of her marketing, and other 
household transactions. He also talked to her 
about astronomy, tried her voice, and being satis- 
fied that it only needed culture to be effective in 
concerts and oratorios, he at once put her under a 
course of training which demanded several hours 
of time every day. 

He also installed her as the manager of his 
household, which, having heretofore been in the 
hands of a " hot-headed old Welsh woman," was in 
a sadly disarranged and dirty condition. Knowing 
but little English, and nothing of English customs, 
yet having all the marketing to do, Caroline found 
it no easy task to deal with butchers, bakers, fish- 
women, and hucksters. Her brother's time was so 
completely occupied that she seldom saw him except 



230 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

at meals, and when he was giving her lessons. Her 
inability to speak English made it impossible for 
her to enter into society. Her correspondence from 
the home circle was tinged with sorrowful accounts 
of the death of her sister's husband, and of her 
disconsolate condition with six fatherless children 
dependent upon her. No wonder, therefore, that 
she tells us of her social loneliness, saying: "I was 
entirely left to myself;" and "I had to struggle 
against homesickness and low spirits." But for 
her deep sister- love for William her life in Bath 
would have been unendurable. 

Miss Herschel was not a faint-hearted, vacil- 
lating damsel, but a hopeful, persevering woman. 
Hence we soon find her in demand as a singer of 
songs and glees at her brother's evening parties, 
given during the season. At the close of the season 
her brother, now desperately busy on his new tel- 
escope, made large demands on her time for assist- 
ance. He turned the whole house, even to one of 
its bedrooms, into a workshop, in which cabinet- 
work was going on, and a lathe kept running, 
making patterns, grinding glasses and eye-pieces. 
In the midst of these unpoetical proceedings, Caro- 
line had to continue her practice for the concerts 
of the ensuing Winter. 



CAROLINE LUCRETIA HERSCHEL. 231 

Both her musical capacity and her energy find 
illustration in the fact that seven years after her 
arrival in England she was able to take leading 
parts in a public presentation of those grand orato- 
rios, the "Messiah," and "Judas Maccabeus." She 
rendered the songs and recitations assigned her so 
well, that she was highly complimented, not only 
by her friends, but also by such high-born dames 
as the Marchioness of Lothian, and other titled 
ladies, who were particularly struck with the cor- 
rectness of her pronunciation of English words, and 
with the elegance of her manners. So marked was 
her vocal ability, that she was made first singer at 
the concerts of the following year. She was then 
offered an engagement at what was called the " Bir- 
mingham Festival," but declined because of her 
determination not to sing in public, except in con- 
certs conducted by her brother. 

It was now apparent that Miss Herschel might, 
by further persistent culture, win a national repu- 
tation and abundant support as a singer. She 
might, if she chose, make herself independent in 
temporalities of her brother. But this was not her 
choice. Her life was too closely linked to his to 
permit a wish to shine in her own light. Hence, 
when his astronomical reputation brought him 



232 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

the means of self-support, and he abandoned his 
musical pursuits, as he did in 1782, Miss Caroline 
also bade adieu to her promising prospects as 
a singer, and devoted herself to astronomical 
studies, that she might become his effective and 
life-long assistant. Was ever sister more disin- 
terested in her devotion to a brother than Caroline 
Herschel ? 

Miss HerschePs connection with her brother 
"William's astronomical studies was brought about 
through the instability of her brother Alexander, 
who, though abundantly capable, was not sufficiently 
persevering to be an assistant upon whom he could 
depend. He would not give himself to the con- 
tinued labor required. Hindered in his observa- 
tions by this fault in Alexander, he turned to 
Caroline, who responded to his call with alacrity. 
With inexhaustible patience she copied his long 
catalogues of stars, his tedious astronomical tables, 
by day, and set herself at night when he was 
making telescopic observations to the regulation of 
his lamp micrometer; the keeping up of a fire when 
necessary; and when his watching was long con- 
tinued, to the preparation of a cup of coffee for his 
refreshment. Of these tasks she wrote: "I under- 
took with pleasure what others might have thought 



CAROLINE LUCRETIA HERSCHEL. 233 

a hardship." Doubtless these were very trying tasks, 
but her sister-love made them seem easy to her. 

William's enthusiastic devotion to his work led 
him to suffer his willing sister to toil at a very 
unfeminine task while he was preparing to cast a 
mirror for his projected thirty-foot telescope. It 
had to be cast "in a mold of loam, prepared from 
horse-dung, pounded in a mortar, and sifted through 
a fine sieve." "It was an endless piece of work," 
she wrote, "and served me for many an hour's ex- 
ercise. Alec frequently took his turn at it, for we 
were all eager to do something toward the great 
undertaking." This prolonged pounding of such 
offensive material must have been very repugnant 
to Caroline's sensibilities; yet she did it with more 
than cheerfulness, because of her absorbing interest 
in her brother's pursuits. She felt amply repaid 
when she witnessed the favor with which the great- 
est scientific minds in England now began to regard 
her brother; when the king and queen invited 
him to their royal abode; when he was appointed 
royal astronomer, with a salary of one thousand 
dollars per annum, and especially when the sum of 
ten thousand dollars was provided to enable him to 
finish his thirty-foot telescope. 

Caroline was thirty-three years of age when her 

20 



234 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

brother gave her a small telescope, called a "finder," 
with which she was to sweep the heavens in search 
of comets during the many nights on which, at this 
time, he was from home in attendance on his royal 
patron, or at the meetings of distinguished men of 
science. She found little to cheer her at first in this 
lonely work, which had to be done on starlight 
nights, " on a grass-plot, covered with dew or hoar- 
frost, without a human being near enough to be 
within call." Moreover, she was as yet so ignorant 
of the starry heavens as to be dependent on an atlas 
for finding what the objects were which she saw, and 
which she was required to describe. But when her 
brother returned and praised her work, which con- 
tained a list of fourteen clusters of stars, which she 
had duly catalogued, she was highly gratified, and felt 
repaid for all the discomforts of her nightly toil. 

After his return she became the attendant of 
his labors on the telescope. She ran to the clocks, 
wrote memoranda, fetched and carried instruments, 
measured the ground with poles, re-measured the 
double stars with the micrometers, and when not 
thus engaged continued her sweepings in search of 
comets. There was peril as well as hardship in 
some of these duties. On the last night of Decem- 
ber, 1783, for example, the clouds having dispersed 



CAROLINE LUCRETIA HERSCHEL. 235 

about ten o'clock, she and her brother hurried out 
to take an observation. Mr. Herschel, on taking 
his place in front of his instrument, called Caroline 
to alter its lateral motion. It was dark, and the 
ground was covered with melting snow a foot deep. 
In approaching the machinery which regulated 
the motion of the telescope, she did not notice a 
tenter-hook which was fastened to the end of the 
machinery. Consequently she fell upon it, and it 
entered her right leg above the knee. 

"Make haste!" cried her brother, wondering 
why the telescope did not move. 

"I am hooked!" was her pitiful response. 

Rushing to her assistance, with the workman 
who was with him, he lifted her from her painful 
position, but, she writes, "not without leaving nearly 
two ounces of my flesh behind." 

The workman's wife was summoned, but was 
too nearly paralyzed with fright to render any val- 
uable aid. Hence she had to bandage the wound 
with her handkerchief, and treat it as best she 
could. She suffered much, and for six weeks her 
physician was uncertain whether or not he could 
save the limb. But the wound healed at last, and 
she comforted herself for all this suffering by being 
told that, owing to the clouds which returned after 



236 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

her accident, and for several nights following, "her 
brother was no loser through this accident." What 
admirable self-forgetfulness is implied in this ! 

In 1786 Miss Herschel was richly rewarded for 
her nights spent in sweeping the heavens, by her 
discovery of a comet. Her brother was absent in 
Germany at the time, setting up a telescope which 
he had made by order of the King of England for 
a German prince. Desiring no respite, the indefat- 
igable Caroline had been spending her days writing 
up catalogues and tables, and in overlooking the 
preparations being made at Slough, their residence 
at this time, for completing a forty-foot telescope. 
The nights, when clear, had been spent with her 
"finder" counting the nebulae. On the night of 
the 1st of August she thought she saw a comet. 
The next night she was able to write with confi- 
dence: "The object I saw last night is a comet I" 
She was delighted, and wrote at once an account of 
her discovery to two distinguished astronomers. 
Guided by her descriptions, they and other students 
of the starry heavens found it also. Alexander 
Aubert, Esq., wrote her, saying: 

"I wish you joy, most sincerely, on the dis- 
covery. I am more pleased than you can well con- 
ceive, that you have made it; and I think I see 



CAROLINE LUCRETIA HERSCHEL. 237 

your wonderfully clever and wonderfully amiable 
brother, upon the news of it, shed a tear of joy. 
You have immortalized your name. You deserve 
such a reward from the Being who has ordered all 
these things to move as we find them, for your 
assiduity in the business of astronomy, &nd for your 
love for so celebrated and deserving a brother." 

Success, while it gratified her love of the ap- 
proval of those she loved and respected, did not 
relax either her scientific zeal or her diligence in 
furthering the work of her now illustrious brother. 
In 1787 she had the further satisfaction of being 
officially recognized as her brother's assistant, with a 
salary of two hundred and fifty dollars a year. On 
receiving her first quarterly payment she wrote: 
"This is the first money I ever thought myself at 
liberty to spend to my own liking. A great uneasi- 
ness was by this means removed from my mind, for, 
though I had been almost the keeper of my brother's 
purse, with a charge to provide for my personal 
wants, . . . yet, when cast up, the sums I had taken 
for this purpose only amounted to thirty-five or 
forty dollars a year, since the time we left Bath," 
six years ago. O, simple-minded, economical, con- 
scientious Caroline Herschel! 

In the following year William Herschel was 



238 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

married, and his sister was thereby relieved of the 
care of keeping her brother's house. But this relief 
did not reconcile her to the fact of his marriage, 
which, very naturally and properly, placed the wife 
first in the husband's affections. It mattered not 
that the wife was gentle, amiable, friendly, and by 
no means jealous of the supreme place which Caro- 
line had held in her husband's regard. His mar- 
riage grieved her exceedingly; and it is supposed 
that she did not hesitate to give expression to her 
grief in her journal for the ensuing ten years, inas- 
much as when time and the affectionate attentions 
of the sister-in-law had dissipated her grief, she 
destroyed that tell-tale record, lest it should give 
needless pain to survivors. 

Miss Herschel's regrets did not quench either 
her devotion to her brother's service or her zeal for 
her own scientific studies. Though she quitted his 
home when his wife became its mistress, and lived 
henceforth in lodgings, she did not cease to be his 
assistant, nor to sweep the heavens with her tele- 
scope in search of more comets. "Before the end 
of 1797," says her biographer, "she had announced 
the discovery of eight comets, to five of which 
the priority of her claim over other observers is 
unquestioned." 



CAROLINE LUCRETIA HERSCHEL. 239 

These faithful labors she continued with unre- 
mitting diligence until her brother's death in 1822. 
The celebrity of Sir William, and her own reputa- 
tion, brought her into frequent contact with dis- 
tinguished scientists, and even with many royal 
personages during the last decade of *her life in 
England. She was also persuaded to pay occasional 
visits to the homes of her most intimate friends, 
and thereby to break up in some small measure the 
laborious monotony of her life. But her brother's 
health, undermined by his excessive labors, prose- 
cuted with little remission in the night, at all 
seasons, in cold and heat for years, began in 1819 
to excite her anxieties. Her own uncommon vigor 
also began to give way, and a severe attack of fever 
brought her to the gates of death. She, however, 
rallied, and resumed her accustomed tasks. But 
Sir William, after struggling heroically with disease 
for some three years, became the victim of the death 
angel on the 25th of August, 1822, "when," she 
wrote, "not one comfort was left to me but that of 
retiring to the chamber of death, there to ruminate 
without interruption on my isolated situation." Alas, 
poor lady ! the light of her life was extinguished. 

Miss Herschel was now "heart-broken and des- 
olate." "All she had of love to give had been 



240 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

concentrated on her brother." With him she had 
also lost the occupation which, for nearly half a cen- 
tury, had occupied her time and filled her thoughts. 
"Iara a person," she said, " who has nothing more 
to do in the world." Then, in the agony of her 
heart, she resolved to quit the land which she had 
loved only for her brother's sake, and go back to 
her native city. Having in the first moments of her 
great sorrow made this really unwise resolution, she 
set about her preparations at once. Only two days 
after his burial we find her selecting "the books 
and clothing" she meant to take with her. Two 
weeks later she is disposing of her furniture, settling 
with her landlord, etc. After this we see her 
taking "an everlasting leave" of her friends. On 
the 18th of October she is on board a "steam- 
packet," bound to Kotterdam, and ten days later she 
is in " the habitation of her brother Dietrich, at Han- 
over," where she hoped to find consolation for her 
wounded affections in the kindly sympathies of 
her relatives. 

It was a vain hope, destined to bear little else 
than the thistle disappointment. She found her 
few living relatives proud of her brother's fame and 
of her celebrity, but not one of them could appre- 
ciate her truly wonderful sister-love, or enter into 



CAROLINE LUCRETIA HERSCHEL. 241 

her views of life. Fifty years had passed since 
she left her native city. She was no longer the 
damsel of twenty-two, but an old lady of seventy- 
two. Time had wrought great changes both in her 
and in them. They had plodded along in a sphere of 
commonplace respectability, and not within the 
radiance of a mind illuminated by brilliant genius, 
as she had done. She had, therefore, grown away 
from their range of thought. She had formed 
habits very unlike theirs ; her ideas were not theirs, 
and they could not be led to adopt them. Hence, 
despite the kindly intentions of her relatives and 
friends, they could not satisfy the craving of the 
old lady's heart for something, if not to replace, 
yet fully to sympathize with that affection into 
which all her life had been freely poured. No 
wonder, therefore, that shortly after her arrival in 
Hanover, we hear her crying like one in distress, 
"Why did I leave happy England ?" No wonder as 
she turned her thoughts more and more, as the 
years sped on, to her brother's only son and his 
family, giving to them somewhat of the love so 
long and so exclusively given to her beloved 
brother, that she often repeated that cry of deep 
regret during the twenty-six years which passed 

before her long life ended ! 

21 



242 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

The first months after her return to Hanover 
she employed herself in completing a catalogue pre- 
viously begun of all the star clusters and nebulae 
observed by her brother in his " sweeps." Of this 
valuable piece of work Sir David Brewster said: 
"It is a work of immense labor, an extraordinary 
monument of the unextinguished ardor of a lady of 
seventy-five in the cause of abstract science." 

For this catalogue the Royal Astronomical So- 
ciety voted her its gold medal in 1828, and elected 
her " to the extraordinary distinction of an honorary 
membership." In the "Address," made at the time 
of the presentation of the medal, J. South, Esq., 
after enumerating the vast and valuable labors of 
Sir William Herschel, asked: "Who participated 
in his toils? Who braved with him the inclemency 
of the weather? Who shared his privations? A 
female. Who was she ? His sister. Miss Herschel 
it was who, by night, acted as his amanuensis. She 
it was whose pen conveyed to .paper his observa- 
tions as they fell from his lips. . . . She it was who, 
having passed the night near the instrument, took 
the rough manuscripts to her cottage at the dawn 
of day, and produced a fair copy of the night's 
work on the following morning. She it was who 
planned the labor of each succeeding night. She 



CAROLINE LUCRETIA HERSCHEL. 243 

it was who reduced every observation, made every 
calculation. She it was who arranged every thing 
in systematic order; and she it was who helped 
him to obtain his imperishable name." Then, after 
describing Miss HerschePs independent discoveries 
of eight comets, and of many nebula?, Mr. South 
added: "Indeed, in looking at the joint labors of 
these extraordinary personages, we scarcely know 
whether most to admire the intellectual power of 
the brother or the unconquerable industry of 
the sister." 

With the finishing of the above-named catalogue 
Miss HerschePs astronomical labors ended. Hence- 
forth she lived in great simplicity, yet comfortably, 
on an annuity left her by her brother. She spent 
her time in receiving the many distinguished vis- 
itors who called to do her honor; in reading, in 
corresponding with her nephew, her brother's widow, 
and her friends; in visiting and being visited by 
the local nobility and royalty. She was also a con- 
stant visitor at the theater and public concerts. All 
her physical and social wants were abundantly met. 
Yet the old lady was not really happy. A vein of 
restlessness and dissatisfaction with life runs like a 
darksome thread through her correspondence. She 
was often ill, a result no doubt of her former labors 



244 SOME REMARKABLE WOMEN. 

at night, in cold and wet — sometimes, it is said, 
when the cold was so intense as to freeze the ink 
with which she was writing. These illnesses became 
more frequent as she neared her end, which was 
not reached until she had attained the venerable 
age of ninety-eight. She suffered but little in her 
last illness, and " went to sleep at last with scarcely 
a struggle." Her nephew, who saw her die, wrote: 
" I felt almost a sense of joyful relief at the death 
of my aunt, in the thought that now the unquiet heart 
was at rest. . . . She lived altogether in the past; 
and she found the present not only strange but 
annoying." 

Why was Miss Herschel's heart "unquiet?" 
"Why did she find life "annoying?" Why did she 
live "altogether in the past?" To these questions 
there can be but one answer. She lacked the chief 
joy of life — the faith by which the soul lives in 
fellowship with God. She was eminently virtuous; 
her pursuits were elevating, and followed with un- 
excelled industry ; she was endowed with rare gifts ; 
her sister-love was pure and beautiful. But there 
is no sign in all her Recollections, journals, or cor- 
respondence, that she knew aught of religion beyond 
its theories and forms. Had she to her excellencies 
of mind, and to the sisterly affection of her gifted 



CAROLINE LVCRETIA HERSCHEL. 245 

soul, which always yearned for love, added the love 
of Christ, she would for her inquietude have had 
rest; her annoyances would have left her spirit un- 
ruffled j and, instead of living in the past, she would 
have lived in joyful anticipation of a blissful future. 
She did well in loving her brother. She would 
have done better had she loved him with a love 
less idolatrous, and concentrated her affections in 
Him who is infinitely better than the best of human 
brothers. "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God 
with all thy heart," is a command which, had she 
obeyed it, would have calmed and sweetened her 
troubled life. 



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